New to well water. Test came back 2.1 ppm iron, 14 grains hardness, pH 7.4, no bacteria. Two adults, one bathroom, maybe 150 gallons a day. A local company quoted 3,400 for a softener plus a dedicated iron filter, and the internet says I can do it with a single big cartridge housing for a few hundred. I have about 1,500 to spend. What's the honest difference in practice?
Get a second quote and ask each of them specifically what happens to the backwash water and how much it uses. My first quote was for a system that would have dumped a lot of water into a septic field that couldn't take it, which nobody mentioned until I asked.
Hadn't thought about the septic interaction at all. Adding it to the list of questions.
Important one. Routing backwash to a dry well or a separate drain rather than the septic is common practice and worth pricing up front, not after.
A softener alone will remove maybe 1-2 ppm of ferrous iron on paper, and people do run them that way. What the brochures don't emphasise is that it fouls the resin over time and you end up cleaning it with iron remover regularly and replacing the bed years earlier than you would have. At 2.1 you're right at the edge where it half works, which is the worst place to be.
Whatever you buy, put a simple sediment prefilter in front of it and a bypass around the whole assembly. The bypass is twenty quid of fittings and it turns a future failure from an emergency into an inconvenience.
@coopvent_cal · 8mo ago · 3 replies
The honest difference is service intervals and how much iron gets through. A cartridge system at 2.1 ppm and 150 gallons a day will need new cartridges every three to six weeks, which is both a real cost and a chore you will resent by August. The two-stage system handles the iron in a backwashing filter so the softener only has to deal with hardness, which is what softeners are actually good at. If 3,400 is out of reach, the middle path I'd take at 1,500 is a single air injection iron filter now and live with 14 grains of hardness until you can add a softener, rather than trying to make one softener do both jobs.
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@lath_and_lime · 8mo ago
Agreed with this order. Iron ruins fixtures and laundry, hardness mostly just annoys you and costs a bit of soap.
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@hornworm_hunt · 8mo ago
Living with the hardness for a year is much more palatable than replacing cartridges every month. Thanks.
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