| SWT Water Treatment Tips |
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| “Unscientific notes from a collection of the greatest minds in water quality improvement.” |
| MetalEase™ Well Application Here is a field tip for MetalEase™ that was passed on to us from a dealer in Sugar Grove, IL. We liked it so much, we wanted to pass it on to you. This one falls under the heading of “That's so simple, we should have thought of that before.” John, at Supreme Soft Water, says that when he runs into particularly tough hydrogen sulfide problems, he recommends the following low cost solution before telling his customers to “drill a new well.” REAL LIFE SOLUTION #1 In this well application, the hydrogen sulfide level is reaching levels that fluctuate between 5 to 10 ppm and the well pump is not capable of pushing more than 6 gpm through the bed. John suggests instead of putting in a single 1 cu.ft. unit of MetalEase, install two 0.5 cu.ft. units in parallel. He says to split the water stream in half by teeing into two 7x44 tanks, each with their own separate control valve. Each tank has a 0.5 cu.ft. of MetalEase in it. Now, instead of running 6 gpm of flow through 1 cu.ft., you end up running 3 gpm through each 0.5 cu.ft. of media. This doubles the sq.ft. surface area that the water comes into contact with. Most of MetalEase's reaction to metals occurs in the top portion of the bed anyway. After the twin tanks, you bring the two water streams back together before sending it off to the rest of the house. Here is the truly great benefit of this type of installation. John's simple engineering now allows you to utilize the full flow of the well pump to backwash the two tanks separately, giving a full 6 gpm to each 0.5 cu.ft. of media. How? By setting the filter valves to backwash at two different times. He sets one valve to backwash at 2:00 am, and the other valve to backwash at 3:00 am. This allows tremendous lift to each bed separately. A further improvement to this is to use a heavy underbedding, such as quartz, for additional distribution of the water. Most oxidation bed medias only work properly if the beds are kept clean. This unique installation idea allows the beds to backwash at twice the rate of service flow. This more powerful backwash would help keep the bed cleaner than if you were trying to lift a full cu.ft. at a time. It also allows you to use filter valves that may not be fully ported. |
| If you have an unscientific idea that you would like to share with your fellow water quality improvement professionals, by all means let us hear it so we can pass the information along. Design by experience and evolution can be more reliable than what the eggheads can do in the lab or on a computer. We here at SWT believe that knowledge is meant to be shared. We do not presume to know more than our customers, and we really enjoy the exchange of ideas. You may e-mail your idea(s) to us at fieldnotes@swtwater.com. |
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