Whole house water conditioning and aquarium water

["Charles Kuehnl" <ckuehnl at cox_net>]

I know this is a bit off subject for the list but I am a little over my
head here technically and not sure how to proceed.  I live in a small
town that uses several wells to supply water.  I believe there is some
conditioning done by the city but I am not sure how much.  I know they
used to add chlorine and believe they now use chloramines.  I have known
for a while that the water here is not great but recently a few things
have been revealed that concern me.  About 6 months ago the city
circulated a notice that there was an excessive level of some common
bacteria in the system.  I do not recall the name of the bacteria but
the city (and the State Health Dept) said it was normally occurring in
the water but the levels had gotten too high due to ongoing work
replacing the distribution system and that it had almost immediately
corrected.  A couple of months ago the paper ran an article on the new
arsenic standards and it was revealed that about 20-25% of the city's
wells are showing excessive levels of arsenic (nearly in violation of
the prior standard and well above the proposed or new standard).  These
wells have to be shut down and replaced.  That is happening.  The most
recent prompting was when we had to replace our water heater and the on
demand unit we ended up with hammered badly until they were able add a
dampener to fix it.  We started seeing some sand-like substance coming
out with the hot water that, according to a plumber, is some severe
carbonate buildup in our hot water pipes shook loose by the hammering.
GH and KH are mostly above 13 - 220-250 ppm (LaMotte) so that really is
not surprising.  The sand coming out of the hot water line is declining
since we fixed the hammering and appears to be about all gone but the
incident has added to my concern about what else is in the water.
 
I know the city or the state has to provide you with test reports and
have looked into that.  The city is in the middle of constructing a new
system so anything they put out will probably not be accurate and
getting something from the state is about like pulling teeth.  Right now
they are replacing all, or almost all, the main service lines.  Yes
everyone's yard is getting torn up at least once and sometimes a few
more.  I believe there is talk about adding a treatment plant or it may
already be planned.  In either case it will not be started until the
line rebuilding is complete.  This may be 5 years or better away and I
am not sure what kind of water they will provide even if the new plant
happens.
 
This got me to thinking about adding some sort of water conditioning
equipment in the line coming to the house.  As I was looking into this I
remembered that many of my neighbors (including a few doctors) and a lot
of my friends who share this water source use bottled water for
drinking.  It has kind of made me wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea
to do this.  When I discussed this with my wife (she used to work for
the State Health Dept) she said she had felt we should have been using
bottled water for some time.  Now she tells me.
 
I have contacted a couple of water conditioning companies (Culligan and
Kinetico) and learned a little more about ion exchange to remove
hardness, RO (which they say the CDC and the EOA feel that RO is the
best method for removing solids from water), and perhaps a couple of
other methods (I think, some of their terms may be marketing names for
the same thing).  According to their websites the CDC and the EPA
indicate RO provides the most reduction of other material in water.  I
am not sure what I am going to do if anything.
 
Although it will have little bearing on what I end up doing to correct
the water used in the house, anything I do will have an affect on the
water I put in my tank (soon to be tanks).  I realize the more I do to
the house water (like RO), the more I will have to do to reconstitute
the water I use in my tanks and that most people on this list recommend
tap water to avoid reconstitution.  Would anyone be kind enough to offer
some suggestions either on or off list about the benefits and trade offs
between levels of household water conditioning and tank water
reconstitution?  I have an engineering background so I can understand
this stuff technically but it is way out of my field and I know little
about the practical aspects.
 
Help!
 
Thanks
Charles
 
 


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