Non-Softening Scale Control Devices

SWEI

For those of us who live and work in regions with hard water, scale is a constant issue which affects nearly all heating and plumbing systems.  At least we don't have to deal with intense corrosion issues.



Nugs pointed at Steve Lower's excellent site <a href="http://www.chem1.com/CQ/aquacrack.html">http://www.chem1.com/CQ/aquacrack.html</a> which exposes some truly out there claims, but the scale control question is a bit less clear-cut to some of us.

Mark Eatherton

My 0.02 worth...

Moved from the Legionella Thread.



I have been using them here in Colorado for around 35 years, and have seen them de-lime systems that I didn't think were de-limeable. I have deployed them all across this fine country of ours. Granted, my experience is "anecdotal", but in my opinion, it is valid and proven.



If it were really hocus pocus, do you believe that numerous companies could support thousands of people selling junk science since 1964 ? (Superior Water Conditioner Company, and Field Controls Corp)



I agree that none of them has any scientific basis to their claims, but science don't mean squat to the actual findings in the field. I will admit, that I would NOT recommend them for use in critical operations (steam power plants or the like) but I have many years of positive experience, personally as well as corporately confirming results.



Numerous other respected Wallies have contacted me off line, and confirmed that they too have seen positive results in more areas than just lime scale avoidance.



I've read Russian reports, American reports, and a report done by the Haifa Institute in Israel that related to agriculture usage, and they too saw some fantastic results.



I am also aware of a vintner in California who has a proprietary magnetic water conditioning system for his vines that has his net sugar productions higher than anyone else in his valley.



The real bottom line is, that they are effective in controlling certain types of lime scale, but not ALL (ineffective on glass water corrosion, a silica based calcification).



There are some people here on this forum, who also were devout ion exchange advocates who gave these conditioners a try, and saw the results, and are now firm believers of the process.



So, I hear what you are saying as it pertains to the theoretical sciences involved, but trust me when I tell you that in some (most) cases they do in fact work quite well. I'd hate to have to testify in court FOR the product, because the only real proof that I have that they work are the jobs where I have actually employed them and seen significant and complete eliminations of hard water scaling.



Trust me, I am NOT a snake oil sales man. I am a recognized expert witness in hydronics in Colorado and Federal Court venues. I can't afford to promote, or speak of something that is in fact bogus...



I am also a licensed master plumber with 36 years field experience, FWIW.



We are both entitled to our opinions. You've expressed yours, and I've expressed mine. Let's see what others experience's have been.



The link that you provided is a 404 dead spot. Try re posting again. I am always willing to read and learn, but my personal experience means more than research done in a lab, far away from the reaches of reality.



Sincerely,



ME

Mark Eatherton

In fairness....

NUGS had posted this link to a technical web site on the other post.





www.chem1.com



Am still reading it..



ME

TonyS

I was a disbeliever

I argued this point with Mark, Of course I was getting my info from a water conditioning magazine whos main contributors and advertisers have vested interest.

But knowing that Mark is the kind of guy who takes things apart just to see how they work, I couldnt just disregard his advice.

So I bypassed the water softner and installed an electric descaler. Since that time I have thrown out the water softner to make more room in my mechanical room.

It works very well and when scale deposits are left from sitting water evaporating(They dont remove calcium) the scale is easily cleaned off with a little mineral acid based cleaner, much easier than the stains left from the sodium.

My apologies Mark, you were correct. If I recall that was over 3 years ago.

nugs

Vested Interest

I have no vested interest in anything at all.  If I thought they worked, I would sell them.  I have no stock in any filtration companies whatsoever.  I am by profession a licensed master plumber (40 years) and have been teaching plumbing & HVAC at the high school and college level for the past 5 years or so.  If as you correctly say that these things do not remove minerals (and they don't) what do they remove and how do they do it?  consider the contact time between the magnetic (or radio wave or electric) field and the water flowing past it.  Just how much power do you think those devices are capable of emitting?  Furthermore, what chemical or physical properties do these "fields" emit and what scientifically provable evidence is there that this effect has any effect on water?  The answer is none.  The easily removable powder that you are finding is the same powder that you will find if you remove all the devices from your system.  Even softeners do not get rid of sulfides or chlorides which both will leave powder on your glasses and faucets.  I tend to get carried away on this subject because it just plain aggravates the hell out of me that these scam products are allowed to be sold to unsuspecting folks and they are ridiculously expensive for the components involved.  Open one up and tell me there's a grand worth of stuff in there.  Now do some digging and see how many lawsuits and complaints have been filed against these companies.  But better than that you can read through www.chem1.com and find everything you need to find.  Or, you can waste you hard earned money or your customers selling junk science.

Mark Eatherton

No apologies necessary Tony...

We are ALL here to learn. And this is not the first, nor the last time I will be called upon the carpet for promoting alternative water conditioning.



As I've stated before, these are NOT a fix all for all water quality issues. Ion exchange softeners have their place in life to be sure.



Thanks for chiming in.



ME

SWEI

Testing

The Germans have the closest thing to an accepted testing process for physical water conditioners.  Well, at least the Germans accept it.  DVGW standard W-512 has been criticized here in the US, but none of the critiques I have read have proposed a better evaluation protocol.  http://media2.wattswater.com/DVGW-report-OneFlow.pdf describes the process used and the results of comparing OneFlow (based on next ScaleStop media which works by what they call Template Assisted Crystallization) with untreated water.



I have a copy of a presentation made to the Arizona Water Quality Association which compares results of multiple technologies including TAC, Electrically-Induced Precipitation, Capacitative Deionization, and Electromagnetic Technologies.  This test was based on W-512 with some parameters changed to more accurately reflect conditions encountered in DHW systems (lowered temp from 80C to 60C, increased watt density to more closely model that of an electric water heater.)  I've asked the author for permission to distribute some or all of his presentation.

nugs

Thank you

For directing folks the the Arizona Water Quality Association.  Many states have similar organizations also.  Readers should go here http://www.azwqa.org/index.cfm?pageID=0

for the AWQA's assessment of alternative treatment technology.



I must say that there are technologies out there that do work to some degree, but most of them are large scale, industrial type systems that require a whole lot of power and even more maintenance and are totally unsuitable for residential use.  Again, please read all you can.  Find information from sources that are not interested in selling or promoting products and services and when someone tells you their product works ask how?  and don't get sucked into testimonials and snake oil.  These scams have been around for over a hundred years now.  Magnetic and radio wave pseudo-technology goes back to the 1920's.  When in doubt, ask a chemist what can and can not be done to minerals with magnets or electricity.  They laws of physics can't be changed or altered just because some quack strapping magnets to a pipe says they can.

TonyS

You sound like I did

All I can tell you is Go buy one and try it. Im sure being in business that long someone will give a a very special self use price.

Surely you have a customer that has a calcium problem that will let you give it a try.

What have you got to lose, a couple of bucks and a little time for first hand knowledge is a cheap price to pay.

nugs

Try one

Tony, I have done just exactly that with several of the currently available devices that are being marketed including the one that you hear on the radio all the time.  I have bought them and run them through exhaustive testing with always the same results.  Waste of money, no measurable effects.  Oh yes and for the record, no, absolutely none of the purveyors of those things will offer any discount whatsoever on their stuff.  They need all the money they can get to pay lawyers LOL

SWEI

official positions

Water treatment industry groups have positions which tend to represent those of their membership.  Many of those members manufacture, sell, or install salt-based softeners. Draw your own conclusions.



Some of the physical water conditioning technologies appear to influence the crystallization of CaCO3 (increasing aragonite at the expense of calcite) which would explain the results that ME has seen with his systems and that I can attest to with regard to TAC.  Two very difficult applications in which I have seen good results from TAC are espresso machines (ridiculously small boilers with crazy delta-Ts) and as a pretreatment for RO systems.  The effect on boiler or membrane life is hard to ignore.



I still say that DVGW standard W-512 seems like a reasonable way to evaluate performance of these systems, though I'm all ears if someone has a better method of testing and will share their lab results.



BTW -- while 10.5 GPG may be considered "very hard" by industry standards (our city water here runs ~11.5 GPG) there are quite a few places which have it far worse.   Some areas in NM have average hardnesses of 75 GPG with individual wells measuring over 125 GPG.  FWIW, TAC systems do not work well there and the only real answers for them are ion exchange or capacitative DI.



Ion exchange softeners are not a universal solution either.  Besides the cost and environmental concerns with salt and the cardiovascular health issues some have, there are some basic chemistry implications.  When swapping Na+ or K+ for Ca+ and Mg+, water pH and chlorides can both become problematic.  In effect, you can trade calcification for corrosion.

Mark Eatherton

My experience with ion (sodium) exchange units...

I had to replace ALL of the DHW lines, and circ return lines in a large hotel in Cheektowaga New York due to an overzealous salt salesman who had their softeners set for ZERO grains of hardness. Per the CDA, softened water is known to carry more oxygen, and is extremely aggressive towards copper tubing. In fact, if a house uses soft water from day one, it will not allow a protective patina to be laid down, thereby allowing the copper tubing to be attacked by the oxygen in the water and will fail much earlier than expected. So much for salt softeners being the ideal and preferred method of water conditioning...



As an apprentice, coming up under my father in the plumbing trade, he noted that all of his male customers who had been sold a water softener (7 GPH background hardness) ended up suffering from one heart malady or another. Shortly thereafter, the AMA came out and said that anyone with problems associated with heart disease should avoid the use of sodium softened water. Too late by then, most of his customers with softeners had died, or suffered debilitating strokes from the soft water being absorbed through their skin. Talk about snake oil salesmen...



Did you ever wonder why it is that they don't recommend that you drink soft water , or why it is that they ALWAYS bypass the exterior lawn faucets and not allow the growing things to be watered with soft water??? If you've ever seen a lawn or garden that has been watered with soft water, you'd know why.



The very first MHD conditioner I ever installed was given to me and my customer, who had a 199K btuH tank style water heater that was SO LOUD from liming that it kept the homeowner up when it would fire at night to recover its standby losses. I warned her that it was a new device to me, and that I could not guarantee that it would even work. She agreed to give it a shot anyway. I also warned her that if any faults or cracks were in the vessel of the tank, that there was a real good possibility that the tank could fail.



When I called her back after a month, she said the heater was virtually silent. 6 weeks later, she called to tell me that the heater had failed, and she needed a new one. That was a BonAqua strap on unit. By your judgement, that makes me a quack. Thanks for the compliment.



Back to Buffalo. There was a commercial dishwasher on this property (Hobart) that had an element that sat in a well, and kept the water in the wash tank warm. It looked like something out of Yellowstone Nat'l Park. Crystals with heat emminating from the crystals. Somewhere, way deep inside was an electric element.



In order to replace the rinse heads on the wash arms, they had to remove the wash arms and send them to a sand blasting shop to clear the calcium so they could get a wrench on the flats of the jets.



I "gave" them a Superior MHD unit, and piped it into the circ return of their kitchen hot water heating system. Bear in mind that Cheektowagas water is EXTREMELY hard. After about 6 months time, I was back at the property doing additional work, and remembered to ask the Chief Engineer if he'd had a chance to look at the problematic dish washer to see if there was any change. He said "Lets go look!" We swang by the kitchen, and he opened the panels to the dishwasher and exclaimed "HOLY CRAP!"



My heart jumped into my throat. I thought for sure that the device had failed. He then proceeded to say that in the 15 years he'd worked at this hotel, that this was the first time he'd actually seen the maintenance heating element, and that the spray rinse arm looked brand new, as did the whole insides of the machine.... Did I mention that I had to rip the sodium exchange softener out 6 months earlier?



And then there was the son of a prominent physician, whose mother told me that their son was wanting to do a Science Fair experiment with water, but didn't know exactly what he could do. I sat down with him, and introduced him to a Superior MHD water conditioner that I carried around as a demo unit for customers in need (I don't sell them unless needed). He set up a scientific experiment using Alfalfa Seed Sprouts using three different types of water.



One with straight city water, one with softened water (his parents had a softener in their house) and one with raw city water that had been run through the Superior unit. He photographed these sets of sprouts over a period of time, and documented the growth of the sprouts. The soft water plants started to sprout, then died. The raw water sprouts grew as well as could be expected. The MHD conditioned sprouts grew twice as fast as the raw water sprouts, and ended up growing TWICE as large as the raw water samples. He won first place at his school, and took second place in the State competition.



These to me, mean much more than a person who takes a short term view, and pooh poohs a given technology without giving it time to work to see if there are any long term results/benefits.



The Superior Water Conditioning Company (a division of ChemTune, Inc) has been building water conditioners since 1964. They have been banned from selling them in the same state in which they are made (Indiana) by the Water Quality Association, which had a powerful ($) lobbiest to get them outlawed in the state of Indiana. And they are still in business today...



The Field Controls Corp has a unit that uses 24 VAC to generate the signal that conditions water. I have one in my mountain home ($200.00) It is called a Clear Wave. I've had it in operation for 6 months now. I installed it due to rather hard water (12 GPG) and the spotting occurring on our dishes. I figured if it was spotting on the dishes, it was probably plugging the brazed plate heat exchanger that does my DHW. After about a month of usage, the white spots on the dishes disappeared.



Now, these are just a selected few of my positive experiences with MHD water conditioning devices, and I've not even talked about the cooling tower applications I have performed over the years.



OK, you can say that these are all anecdotal, but I have seen them with my own eyes (and the customers eyes) and I know for a fact, that they work. Not in every case (won't affect silica based calcification), but in the cases where I applied them, they work great. As a matter of a fact, I can't recall one that DIDN'T work.



You are entitled to your opinion. Just please keep the caustic comments to a minimum. Ya just never know who you are going to offend... Think before you write. We are all here to learn and teach.



PS, The Department of the Navy has had positive experience with these devices as well. Are their claims also bogus?



ME

NYplumber

Magnetic

Magnetic treatment works. The "as seen on tv" strap onto the water main gimmicks don't.

The device should have a flow restrictor matched to the devices size, & baffled to maximize the water to magnet contact.



The product I have been installing for 5+ years on steam boilers, water mains, restaurant equipment has entirely eliminated the need for descaling. Transfer that into no down time and more efficient equipment throughout the life of the use. The device should be set up with a proper bypass and flange/union connection with a drain port for cleaning.

jim_94

pelican salt free?

Has anyone heard of the Pelican saltfree water "softener"? It's supposed to put the minerals into suspension so they don't scale up and harden up your valves, piping and indirects. It claims to have been tested in Germany and exceeded their standards. I have to completely rebuild three Kohler combined thermostatic valves and volume contols (k401) and then the transfer valve above to switch to different heads. Rebuilds all the way down to the stop/spring checks and brushing out all the build up in the valve itself, it feels like a miniture boiler cleaning. I basically do not want to have to rebuild my valves all over in a few more years and am looking for a salt free softener or conditioner that will allow this. Also they state on their website that the main unit can go for 250 million gallons while the prefilter is 4-6 months. Reviews on the web have been 50/50 so I figured I'd ask here and get responses from other plumbers, etc. Sorry for the long post.

Jim 

nugs

Pelican

It would probably not be appropriate to give you advice for or against that particular device here.  If you have questions as to how the device is supposed to work, you can contact the manufacturer and perhaps you will get a straight answer.  If you happen to be lucky enough for that to happen, then you can do the research on that particular scientific principal and make an educated decision for yourself rather than rely on research done by people that have spent the last 25 years or so doing just that. I can see that my opinions on this subject have stepped on a couple of peoples toes and for that, I do apologize but I will not throw away 25 years of research just to make someone feel better.



But, if you really want the truth go here http://www.chem1.com/CQ/magscams.html



this covers your mentioned products as well as those from MHD et.al.

HDE

Army corp of engineers

An older study but worth a read if you haven't seen it on this controversial subject:



http://www.wbdg.org/ccb/ARMYCOE/PWTB/pwtb_420_49_34.pdf

nugs

Army corps study

I am very familiar with that document and though it's a bit of a dry read, for those that don't want to be bothered to slog through it all only need to go as far as the 2nd page where this is written.



C.  Although the devices were not effective, it is still very important that Army public works personnel use this information to avoid unnecessary expenditure of manpower and funds to purchase and install these devices.



sometimes even the military gets it right.

SWEI

AWQA presentation author

Does not want his presentation posted in a public forum, which I can certainly understand.  He pointed me at the WaterReuse Foundation / ASU study referenced in that presentation http://www.wbdg.org/ccb/ARMYCOE/PWTB/pwtb_420_49_34.pdf