Does A Water Softener Add Salt To The Water?
This a common concern because people see large amounts of salt being poured into there softener and often times have the misconception that all that salt ends up in their water. The salt that you add to you softener is only used during the regeneration process and is rinsed away before the unit goes back online. With that said a water softener does add a very small amount of sodium to the water as it filters the water through its ion-exchange process. In this process the Calcium and Magnesium ions that the softener is collecting are “exchanged” for sodium ions. This means that exactly how much sodium is added to the water depends on how hard your water is. To figure out how much sodium your water softener will add you multiply your water hardness in GPG (Grains Per Gallon) by 7.866. This will give you the milligrams/liter of sodium added to the water. A typical serving size of water is 8oz so if you want to know how much sodium per “serving” divide that number by 4 to get mg of sodium
