How to size my water softener
Finally you have made the decision to shop for water softeners. There are two elements when deciding the size of your water softener. How hard you water is and how much water your household uses. This can be overwhelming but we are here to help and if you have more questions you can contact us at any time.
Water Hardness
There are a few ways to measure hardness in your water. Taking your water to laboratory if you are on well water is usually recommended. If you're on city water you can find annual water testing reports your municipality has done. These reports can be found with simple Google searches. The information will be in mg/L or GPG. GPG or grains per gallon is the most common. You should never try and guess the grain capacity you need for your household. If you have any iron in your water the hardness level must be adjusted. For every 1.0 ppm or mg/L of iron, 3 GPG of hardness needs to be added to your overall hardness level.
How much water do you use
This isn't going to be 100% accurate because every month water usage usually varies. An average is all that is needed, the average person uses around 70-90 gallons of water per day. So if you have 3 people in your house hold that would be 210-270 gallons per day.
Finally, the size of the softener!
Once you have done all the above you can now figure out the grain capacity needed for your water softener. The formula is (Number of people in home)x(Average daily water usage per person)x(GPG) = Grains of hardness to be removed ever day
If your hardness GPG was 8 and used 210 gallons per day you would be removing 1680 grains per day.
Salt consumption
Now it comes down to how much you want to regenerate. To see how often you need to regenerate you divide the softener grain capacity by how much you need removed daily. So 32,000 capacity divided by 1680 would mean the softener regenerates every 19 days. It's vital to get the right size softener or you will be spending a lot of money on salt. For a 32000 grain softener or a 1 cubit foot system, regeneration takes between 5-7 pounds of salt at 20,000 grains removed compared with 36 pounds of salt at 32,000 grains removed.
For maximum water softening efficiency follow this guide.
0.75 Cubic Feet of Softener Resin = 15,000 Grains Capacity
1.0 Cubic Feet of Softener Resin = 20,000 Grains Capacity
1.5 Cubic Feet of Softener Resin = 30,000 Grains Capacity
2.0 Cubic Feet of Softener Resin = 40,000 Grains Capacity
3.0 Cubic Feet of Softener Resin = 60,000 Grains Capacity
4.0 Cubic Feet of Softener Resin = 80,000 Grains Capacity