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General Information

Why have a Water Softener or R.O. System installed in your home? 

    Every day, thousands of billions of tons of water evaporate from the earth's surface.  As the heat of the sun evaporates the water and draws it from the earth's surface into the atmosphere, many impurities are left behind. The water vapor eventually cools to form clouds and then falls back to earth as precipitation. On it's way from the clouds to your faucet, soft rain water dissolves and absorbs a part of almost everything it passes. The falling rain cleans the air as it falls. Unfortunately the impurities that were removed from the air have not left us, they have just been relocated through the water onto the ground.

     Gases and other contaminants cause undesirable tastes, colors and odors. Water falls upon the ground, collecting sediments like rust, sand and algae. The water eventually finds its way to a surface water supply or percolates downward and collects in an aquifer. As it percolates through the earth, the water can absorb hardness minerals, iron, heavy metals, radioactivity, organic contaminants, and many other complex elements and compounds.

  Water can also collect numerous harmful man-made chemical impurities throughout this cycle. These chemicals are generally odorless, colorless, tasteless and can often be life-threatening. The statement, "my parents drank this water for 75 years and it never killed them", is no longer a valid excuse to not be concerned with water quality.  

    Chemicals that are considered generally acceptable in controlled amounts may react with other elements and/or chemicals to form new compounds that could be highly carcinogenic. Chlorine is one of the best-publicized examples; it reacts with organic matter in water and forms deadly trihalomethanes.

    Hard water is probably the single largest threat facing the American home in the 21st century. Hard water can coat your family, your home and your appliances with thousands of pounds of inorganic mineral rock-scale each and every year; Hard water slowly destroys everything it touches. Left untreated, hard water costs you money, ruins your lifestyle and can even lower the value of your home.

    No one needs to tell you that you're living with Hard Water though. Soap doesn't lather easily, glasses are cloudy after washing, a ring forms around the bathtub, faucets and shower heads are crusty, laundering results are poor and there are many other easily recognized signs.

    There are several degrees of Water Hardness. Even if it is moderately hard, it can seriously damage the plumbing system in your home and, in time, cause inconvenient and expensive problems. Hard water is a poor solvent because it is loaded with a variety of impurities. These dissolved impurities react with certain chemicals found in soap to form a gummy, insoluble curd.

    This soap curd clings stubbornly to everything it touches. The ring around your bathtub is curd. That same curd causes your hair to become dull and hard to manage. Soap curd clogs skin pores and prevents your natural oils from moisturizing your skin. This dryness causes itching and also aggravates skin conditions like psoriasis, eczema and acne. Soap curd is especially noticeable by the scummy film it forms on dishes, glassware, walls and floors. Hardness and other dissolved solids combine to form the residue you see as spots on glasses, crockery, cutlery and shower enclosures.

What is Reverse Osmosis?

    According to www.encyclopedia.com osmosis is the "transfer of a liquid solvent through a semi-permeable membrane that does not allow dissolved solids (solutes) to pass through.  Osmosis refers only to transfer of concentration of the material transferred to the area of lower concentration.  This spontaneous migration of a material from a  region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration is called diffusion."              

    According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, reverse osmosis is the process of pushing a solution through a filter that traps the solute on one side and allows the pure solvent to be obtained from the other side. More formally, it is the process of forcing a solvent from a region of high solute concentration through a membrane to a region of low solute concentration by applying a pressure in excess of the osmotic pressure. This is the reverse of the normal osmosis process, which is the natural movement of solvent from an area of low solute concentration, through a membrane, to an area of high solute concentration when no external pressure is applied. The membrane here is semi-permeable, meaning it allows the passage of solvent but not of solute.

    The membranes used for reverse osmosis have no pores; rather, the separation takes place in a dense polymer layer of only microscopic thickness. In most cases the membrane is designed to allow only water to pass through. The water goes into solution in the polymer of which the membrane is manufactured, and crosses it by diffusion. This process requires that a high pressure be exerted on the high concentration side of the membrane, usually 2 - 14 bar (30 - 200 pounds per square inch) for fresh and brackish water, and 40 - 70 bar [(600 - 1000 psig)] for seawater, which has around 24 Bar (350 psi) natural osmotic pressure which must be overcome.

    This process is best known for its use in desalination (removing the salt from sea water to get fresh water) and has been used in this way since the early 1970s. Its first demonstration was done by Sidney Loeb and Srinivasa Sourirajan from UCLA in the California town of Coalinga.