Salty Water, any cure?

Anonymous-0 · Dec 10, 2009

My son has a well with very salty water. It is not hard in the usual sense of iron,,and stuff like that so we cannot get by with just the typical water softner.

Suggestions on products that might have worked well for others are most welcome. Thanks in advance.

Anonymous-0 · Dec 10, 2009

My well is high in sodium or salt as you say and i run it though a what they call an R-O,,,,,,,Reverse osmoses for our drinking watter,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Now to run it though an RO it has to be very soft as salty watter most often is but if you have some hardness in your watter run it though a softener first,,,,,,,,,The down side is it takes a LOT of watter to make a little......

RayP(MI) · Dec 10, 2009

Distillation, desalination by forcing water through semipermiable membrane. Neither particularly cheap. Had a friend that used salty water for home uses, was constantly hitting up friends for water when away from home. Always had a handful of empty milk jugs in backseat of car.

Spook · Dec 10, 2009

I'd get the well tested. Around here, salt in the water sometimes means the groundwater has been polluted.

showcrop · Dec 10, 2009

Around here a lot of wells would get contaminated by salt runoff from roads. So the state paid for a lot of new wells. That must be the cheapest way out.

Spook · Dec 10, 2009

That happened here in Michigan on a much bigger scale. The state stored salt outside, without any containment for 30+ years. It polluted the water so bad that a couple local lakes were saltier than seawater by a factor of 3 or 4. Even plants wouldn't live there, much less fish. The state ended up constructing a water system for several hundred homes, at a cost of millions. It took lawsuits and 20 years for the state to settle up.

Dan-IA · Dec 10, 2009

Why should distillation be expensive?

I took an old satellite dish and covered it in grease and wallpapered it in tin foil. Then I put a black can at the focal point and could make water boil. After that to distill water all you need is tubing to hold the steam and heatsinks on the tubing to cool the steam back to pure water and a place to hold the now pure distilled water.

Not a continuous solution but you get enough sunny days that you could keep this up year round and generate thousands of gallons of distilled water for very little upfront cost.

da-bees · Dec 10, 2009

Now that is clever.

My first consurne would be to test to make sure it wasn't something such as lead that tasted like salt. After confirming purity,then figure something out.

MarkB_MI · Dec 11, 2009

If he only needs drinking water, then reverse osmosis is the best solution. But if he needs more than a few gallons a day, large RO systems get expensive.

Kansas Cockshutt · Dec 11, 2009

Well, pick your poison.

You can use an osmosis system, and have to deal with the high salinity reject water disposal, don"t want to just run it out on the ground.

Or you can use an electric unit, but those suck a lot of juice to free the salt.

Like others said, best to get it tested before coming up with your plan of attack, salt may be the least of your worries.

Rettchr · Dec 11, 2009

And that system is working for you TODAY in IOWA?
It may be feasible in Ethiopia, but water is needed all year.

greygoat · Dec 11, 2009

What state are you in?
In louisiana your well could have penetrated into
a natural salt dome.

Rettchr · Dec 11, 2009

The sun also moves across the sky so you need to "track" it to keep the light on your target. If you cannot get an employee at third-world goat-herder wages to keep moving your dish, you need the equivalent of a telescope's equatorial mounting, with a power supply....

These are some of the reasons why distillation is expensive

Rollie NE PA · Dec 11, 2009

A person I know had a well with salt. I think he said it was 400 ft deep. He drilled a 2nd well to 600 ft and still had salt water. His neighbor also had the same problem.

They contacted a geologist from the local university who came to their property with maps and such. He told them where to drill new wells which they did and both got salt free wells. The wells are several of hundred ft. from the salt wells but the families said it was well worth it.

Salty Water, any cure?

Anonymous-0

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