Salt or Potassium?

[AZRedhawk44]

So, I've installed a water softener this last spring.

My front hose bib and 1 of 4 rear hose bibs is untreated, the rest are soft water treated by the house system.

My garden is FAR from the 1 rear hose bib that is untreated.  To get it able to irrigate with city water, I've got to basically trench up my entire sprinkler system and yard, and run 150+ feet of PVC back to the garden.  Given this is AZ soil, I'll need to rent a trencher.

Or... I can shift my water softener from using salt, to using potassium.  Supposedly, the plants will grow like wildfire from the switch.

Add to that... I've got a LONG way from my water heater to my master bedroom shower.  I have a Grundfos hot water circulator pump to push hot water to the taps and be ready ASAP rather than having to run out a dozen gallons of water down the tap for the water to warm up.  But, doing that ends up flooding the house main cold return line (and ultimately the line that feeds the sprinklers or garden) with softened/salted water.

Should I shift to potassium chloride for the softener?  Cost differential is from $5 a bag or so, to about $17 a bag.  I go through about a bag a month, give or take.  It'll take 2-3 months for the old salt to work through the system and be worked out with potassium.

[charby]

My garden is 100' from the spigot, I run a lot of hose.

[charby]

You live in an urban neighborhood? More than likely your soil is already highly disturbed and probably salinated. Watering your garden with any type of salt may produce poor results for plant growth and possibly kill any grass where the salted water leaches to.

Potassium is also a salt.

[Azrael256]

I have nothing substantive to add, but please use Kazak potassium.  All other countries have inferior potassium.

[RoadKingLarry]

What about Brawndo?

[kgbsquirrel]

What about Brawndo?

It's got electrolytes!

[makattak]

Potassium chloride is also a salt.

'

FTFY

[JonnyB]

Irrigating with softened water will use up a lot of salt/potassium. Our softener will treat about 500 gallons per cycle. We can put that much on the garden in a very short time.

I'd use unconditioned water, no matter how long a hose I needed. Buy fat hose for that long a run - 3/4 or, if you can find it, 1 inch.

jb

[brimic]

I can't remember the soil science for what salt does to it, those college credits were a few decades ago, but I can remember than none of it is good.
If it makes you feel better, I have to run two 50 foot hoses to get to the middle of my garden.

[Tallpine]

Our horse corral is on the far side of our land from our house, and we have about 800' of hose running to the horse trough 

[charby]

I can't remember the soil science for what salt does to it, those college credits were a few decades ago, but I can remember than none of it is good.

Wikipedia to the rescue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_salinity

[brimic]

Wikipedia to the rescue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_salinity

I remember it affecting one the important minerals in soil by causing it to leach out, phosphorus or calcium or something...

[zxcvbob]

1) Bypass the water softener when you water the garden, and water longer at a time but less often.  There should be a bypass valve (or 3 gate or ball valves) on the water softener supply lines to switch it out. 

2) Or buy a longer hose.

[Marnoot]

I remember it affecting one the important minerals in soil by causing it to leach out, phosphorus or calcium or something...

This. If you saturate your soil with potassium chloride, the soil will basically act just like the ion exchange resin in your water softener and exchange calcium ions in the soil for potassium ions in the water, with the end result of calcium being leached out of the soil (once the potassium concentration > calcium concentration) which is no bueno.

[Brad Johnson]

Salt or potassium?

SPAM.  And pancakes.

Brad

[never_retreat]

Can't you just feed the problem faucet with a new pipe to the untreated line in the basement?

[AZRedhawk44]

Can't you just feed the problem faucet with a new pipe to the untreated line in the basement?

New pipe would have to go from water softener in mud room next to garage... up into the attic... across the entire house (it's a ranch single story and sprawls a long way)... over the master bedroom... down the wall... a trench would be digged (dug?) to go underground about 40-50 feet out to my separate workshop building... and then turned into a faucet.  Probably a 200 foot run.

Or, splicing off the sprinkler system manifold, it would be about 30-40 feet to the back wall, then about 100 feet along it to the garden location.

[RoadKingLarry]

Buy a roll of black poly tube, run from source to destination,  bury shallow so you can mow over it, apply compression male and female hose connections at appropriate ends. Use all summer, pull it up in the fall, repeat in the spring. Or just leave it in place and drain and cap when not in use.

[Balog]

Buy a roll of black poly tube, run from source to destination,  bury shallow so you can mow over it, apply compression male and female hose connections at appropriate ends. Use all summer, pull it up in the fall, repeat in the spring. Or just leave it in place and drain and cap when not in use.

Yup. I don't think Dad even drained ours, and we lived in the low desert not the Valley proper so winter nights got colder. Not really enough extended hard freezes to worry about winterization of exterior pipes.

[charby]

New pipe would have to go from water softener in mud room next to garage... up into the attic... across the entire house (it's a ranch single story and sprawls a long way)... over the master bedroom... down the wall... a trench would be digged (dug?) to go underground about 40-50 feet out to my separate workshop building... and then turned into a faucet.  Probably a 200 foot run.

Or, splicing off the sprinkler system manifold, it would be about 30-40 feet to the back wall, then about 100 feet along it to the garden location.

You may want to try the hose first, you may hate gardening or it turns out to be a pisspoor spot to garden. Try the endevor first before dumping a lot of capital into a dead investment.