Hard Water or Softened Water for Hydronic System

Brad White

With softened water, you have a higher sodium (salt) content which is not helpful. Minerals in hard water tend to precipitate out when heated and can be kept in suspension with proper chemical treatment/dispersants. Check out Rhomarwater.com for some back-up and good general information.

The deal is, a properly constructed closed heating system should only need to be filled once, vented and topped off. If a system has repeated make-up water using hard water, that is an entirely different issue. Hard or not it will shorten the life of a system. The amount of minerals in a single fill should not be so bad as to plug up a system or cause a noticeable problem, unlike your water heater. If my water were that bad, I would move :)

Personally, I filter my make-up water via a GE SmartWater filter to remove sediment, chlorine and some organics, that is about it. The water I have is Quabbin Reservoir water and is not very hard.

MCR

Hard Water or Softened Water for Hydronic System

I have the choice of using either hard water or softened water in my hydronic system (copper piping, fin tube baseboard, cast iron circulator). Which is best? What are the advantages and/or disadvantages of each?

hr

How hard

Do you have a ppm number. Personally any water over 12- 15 grains I haul water to the job. I believe that is about the max. hardness to add boiler treatments like Rhomar boiler treatments.

50 cents a gallon is a reasonable price to pay for DI water. I buy mine from Rhomar in 55 gallon barrels. If you use DI water you must add some conditioners or it may atteck the metals. Same with RO water.

Good quality water is a MUST if you plan on blending glycols.

hot rod

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