CR Spotless
I fell last year and tore up my shoulder drying my EZ2CY enclosure after
washing the boat to prevent water spots. Our marina uses a well for dock
water and it really requires wiping everything down. While I was
recuperating from the surgery I was determined to find a portable deionized
water filter that would eliminate the need to wipe down the boat. I used
the big Culligan deionization tanks in a car wash in another life and they
were great but very expensive.
I have spoken to lots of boaters who have the PVC cylinders that are small
water softeners and everyone says that they help but they still wind up
wiping everything down to eliminate spots. These include brands like Boji,
Wetspot and Spotfree. These are water softeners that can be recharged by
back flushing with salt.
I finally found an affordable deionized water system similar to the ones
used in carwashes. The unit is called CR Spotless and they have a website
at http://crspotless.com
This unit uses two different resin bases to strip the water completely
clean and there are no spots. My enclosure and decks remain free of any
water spotting.
There are a couple of downsides to this technology. First the resin must be
replaced when it is used up. There is no recharging, just replacement. The
cost to replace the resin is around $100. The second downside is that the
volume of water passing through the filter must not exceed 2 gallons a
minute. They supply a nozzle to regulate this amount. I find the flow at 2
gpm adequate. The third issue is that they do not recommend that you filter
your drinking water because your body expects and needs minerals and they
are removed in the filtering process.
The unit comes with a battery operated digital meter that reads the parts
per million present in the water before and after filtering. When the
output exceeds 30ppm you have to replace the resin. I have been using the
unit for two months and it is currently only reading 3 ppm, so I am sure
one set of resin will easily last the summer season, maybe two.
I bought the larger DIC-20 that they show on their website for $449. Costco
sells these on line only for $419 with an extra resin set and free
shipping. Costco also lets you return the unit for a full refund if your
not happy with no time limit. The manufacturer markets these for RVs and
cars but they say that they don't know much about boats.
No connection but for a weekend boater this saves a lot of time and if
keeps me from falling off a wet deck again it is really cheap!
Frank Burrows Destiny 1979 43' Viking MY
Piney Narrows Chesapeake Bay
Frank,
Went to their web site.
They use HOH resin, no different than what the other guys are using.
And, chemically, HOH recharged just by sending rock salted water
slowly backwards thru the resin.
So, you can revitalize HOH resin. Did it all the time at the nuclear
power station.
They may not want you to because of other reasons, but chemically,
there should be no reason why one cannot.
HOH does not wear out though with heavy use, it can become less
effective if exposed to excessive heat, excessive flow, and
excessive solid filtration clogging it up.
You may be finding that their product is more effective because they
have engineered in low flow (a necessity since it takes time on
contact with the resin for the water to be "cleaned"), small
advertised capacity, and the improbability of creating water channel
in the resin bed that cause the incoming water to bypass flowing over
and around the HOH resin. One could put a ppm meter on the other
brands and reshake the resin bed, change / recharge when ppm exceeds
30 also....
And, HOH resin should be available at any chemical supply house. Not
so sure of the price now, but worthy of a check...
Lee
On 20 Jun 2007, at 06:07, Frank Burrows wrote:
...
I have spoken to lots of boaters who have the PVC cylinders that are
small water softeners and everyone says that they help but they still
wind up wiping everything down to eliminate spots. These include
brands like Boji, Wetspot and Spotfree. These are water softeners
that can be recharged by back flushing with salt.
I finally found an affordable deionized water system similar to the
ones used in carwashes. The unit is called CR Spotless and they have
a website at http://crspotless.com This unit uses two different resin
bases to strip the water completely clean and there are no spots. My
enclosure and decks remain free of any water spotting...
Frank Burrows wrote:
I fell last year and tore up my shoulder drying my EZ2CY enclosure after
washing the boat to prevent water spots. Our marina uses a well for dock
water and it really requires wiping everything down. While I was
recuperating from the surgery I was determined to find a portable deionized
water filter that would eliminate the need to wipe down the boat. I used
the big Culligan deionization tanks in a car wash in another life and they
were great but very expensive.
I have spoken to lots of boaters who have the PVC cylinders that are small
water softeners and everyone says that they help but they still wind up
wiping everything down to eliminate spots. These include brands like Boji,
Wetspot and Spotfree. These are water softeners that can be recharged by
back flushing with salt.
I use a PVC softener I made. I do well system service for a living,
water treatment is part of that service, so I have ready access to a lot
of the materials. I posted about my home-made softener before, it's
really the best thing I ever did for the boat! What a wonderful luxury
to have soft water aboard, and for spot-free boat washing. It really
does make a dramatic difference.
Many of the softeners like the Spotfree are fabricated from 4" PVC. I
made mine from 6", it's about 24" long. It holds about 1/3 cu. ft of
resin. (More volume than the SpotFree & similar units.) I also have a
larger one that's 48" long, it holds about 3/4 cu ft.
A full cu. ft. of resin will handle about 26,000 grains of hardness with
a 10# salt recharge. If you "short salt" the recharge, and limit the
amount of hardness to about 18,000 grains, you'll only need 1/2 the salt
to recharge. With a 1/3 cu ft resin bed, 10,000 grains would require a
5# salt dose for recharge. So my small unit at 10,000 grains capacity
will theoretically handle 1600 gallons of water that's 6 grains hard.
The big one will do 2200 gals. on the same 5# salt charge. Unless you
really know the hardness of the water you're using, it's really hit or
miss. Plus, regeneration really doesn't zero the hardness, you're
backwashing & rinsing with hard water, so there's some inherent loss.
My point in all this is that the small units Frank refers to will
require regeneration at approx. 1000 gal. or less of flow. I don't know
what they recommend, but that's the capacity I come up with based on
what I know about how softeners work. A softener that can be recharged
with salt is a deionizing filter. I suspect the high dollar units that
can be exchanged are the same thing, with a marketing pitch to make them
more than they are, but that's just MHO.<G>
I suspect if the SpotFree unit is leaving spots, it's being overloaded.
If it's run up to its capacity, it will take the maximum amount of salt
to regenerate, short-salting the regeneration will only start off the
new cycle with media that's already loaded, so it will substantially
reduce the amount of hardness that can be absorbed. To know where the
softener stands, you really need to know 3 things:
- Hardness in grains/gal of (raw) water being treated
- Cumulative volume in gals. of water flowing through the media
- Volume in cu ft of the resin bed
If you know that information, you can predict the need for regeneration
with a fair degree of accuracy, plus calculate the amount of salt
required. Realistically, for our boating purposes, hit or miss works
most of the time. A hardness test kit is an inexpensive way to determine
if the softener is working, and helps you determine the hardness of the
source water to predict how much water you can use before recharge. Not
a lot of effort, really for the improvement in water quality on board.
Steve Sipe
The units (depending upon size) require recharging after 100 to 300 gallons.
The prices for the replacement media are ridiculous based upon their
website.
Ron Rogers