Using magnets for water softening in the home

[murphysranch]

I did a search in this forum to see if its been discussed before. Nothing found.

I was ordering from DripWorks and found that they had a magnet that you place on the incoming pipe of your water system (city or well) and the magnetization will soften your water. Living here now, I find that the water is very hard, and I'm not gonna spend the big bucks nor waste the gallons and gallons of water by buying a water softener like I had in the last home. I did a search on the internet and ebay and found more info and more suppliers.

Anyone had any success or failures with a magnet on your incoming water pipe?

 

[patandchickens]

It is generally considered, based on actual studies, not to work at all.

You might look into it more before spending hard-earned money on it...



Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Mackay]

I am also on the verge of selecting a water softener,

I think I will go with this... it does extraordinary things for gardens to. Look at this site carefully.

The good thing about this product is that it has a money back guarantee if you don't like the results... I am convinced. Been watching this for a while. Watch the videos... my friend Adam Abrahams is convinced.... and I trust his judgement. He did some of the interviews.

http://www.utopicwater.com/

do a search of Adam Abraham combined with utopic water and you will find some very intersting information and video interviews.


I plan on putting the house hold unit just before the splint in the line that will send water out to my garden. I called utopic water and they said that that would be fine as long as the water does not travel over 300 feet. So my garden and my house will have structured water.

 

[patandchickens]

This is TOTALLY not a comment on any PARTICULAR product or company, but I would like to point out that "satisfaction guaranteed or your money back" does not necessarily mean anything.

Bazillions of products pledge that.

Bazillions of consumers have discovered that talk is cheap Often it is difficult or impossible to actually pry your money back loose from them once they've got it. Sometimes they deduct 75% of it as 'handling, shipping, installation, restocking fee', etc. Sometimes they claim you're sending it back damaged. Sometimes they refuse to communicate back with you til it is past the deadline for refunds. Or quite often they take the refreshingly direct approach of simply not ever actually getting around to sending you your money

I would not suggest considering money-back guarantees in any way a mitigating factor when deciding to buy a product...

JMHO,

Pat

 

[Mackay]

I know what you mean Pat. I've been talking to this company and I think they will honor it, if not they know I will slay them with my blog. and other connections I have that have been promoting them.

 

[dacjohns]

These are my thoughts without doing any research.

Magnets work on iron, not other minerals.

Hard water isn't caused only by iron, it is also caused by other minerals in the water.

Magnets will not always do what you need to soften water.

I think for the magnets to remove iron in water they would have to be really strong. Then how do you get the collected iron out of your pipes?




OK, I just looked at the website. It doesn't work by attracting iron, it works kind of through ionization.

http://www.dripworksusa.com/store/magnets.php?left

 

[Occamstazer]

The dripworks product has a couple of statements that play a bit fast and loose with scientific reality, but I suppose the product looks sounds enough if all you want to do is prevent buildup.

That Utopic water site has me laughing hard.
They must have taken different chemistry classes than I did.
I really, really love the page where they describe what "empowered water" is. (Snort, giggle).
Then they show you three pictures:
1. A snowflake: empowered water
2. A crystal of some sort: distilled water
3. What is this? Tree bark? Fungus?: "dead" water

The "process" they describe is hilarious. That energy they are empowering the water with?
Friction.

The entire site is complete and utter nonsense.


ETA: Josh just suggested that perhaps they fill bathtubs and play "Eye of the Tiger" in order to empower the water and make it feel really good about itself.

 

[Wifezilla]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btPJPFnesV4

 

[murphysranch]

Ok, I'll forget about the magnet idea. And for the other one, Utopic, I took too many years of undergrad and graduate chemistry classes to believe that the water molecules are transformed. Sorry, don't mean to irritate or poke a hole in your investigation, Mackay. I'd like to hear what you experience after you purchase one of the units. There are always new discoveries made every day about the world around us, including those things we can't see with our eyes.

 

[Icu4dzs]

Hello Folks,
I got on today and found this topic interesting. I, like some of you have taken way too many college level chemistry courses and agree with the folks when it comes to the "snake oil sales" approach to water.
I did research in biochemistry while I was in college. In order to purify water we did several things. We de-ionized it with a column filled with de-ionization media and double distilled it. That is all we did. It was so chemically pure that we were able to do our experiments with it and not have any impurity to distort our results.
As you know, distillation is physically simple. Double distillation is just as physically simple but now we are talking about energy consumption issues here for the sake of pure water. De-ionization is actually simple but is morbidly expensive. You simply put the crystals in a column and run the water through it...much like the water softeners that are commercially available. However, in the commercial products they use Sodium Chloride (table salt) to displace Calcium and other metal salts from the water. Displacing the calcium and other metals simply puts sodium into the water.

Here is a web site that discusses many of the available "water purification" devices that are for the most part "snake oil" sales of things that sound really cool but have essentially no "truth" or validity. The guy who assembled this website is a chemist. He has to my opinion good credentials for his assertions.
http://www.chem1.com/CQ/wonkywater.html

Hope this helps you make informed decisions regarding the expenditure of your hard earned and probably not huge volume of money.

Certainly, the purification of water these days is of significance given the amount of garbage being released into the water from any number of sources, not the least of which are petrol chemicals of every description, agricultural pesiticides and poisons of every description, increasing volumes of excreted pharmaceuticals (both human and agricultural.)

In all, I've found that a reverse osmosis system (properly maintained) will do a credible job of cleaning water that is not filled with particulate debris which can be filtered out with something as simple as a Big Berkey. If you want to know how to get good drinking water on a ship in the Navy, you call the "water king" whose job it is to be responsible for the quality and safety of the water. Those guys can give you all the "right information" you could possibly want. They process sea water into drinking water and do a great job of it.

Of course YMMV
Best to All,
Trim