If
you have a business such as a hotel or restaurant you will want
to have everything kept in good working condition. Cleanliness
will also be a concern and the unsightly stains that limescale
leaves on bathroom fixtures can put your customers off.
Hard water is the culprit that leaves the surfaces looking dull
and puts stains on wash basins. Hospitals, nursing homes,
processing plants for food and other commercial buildings also
suffer from hard water problems.
When
you choose to use commercial water softeners you can expect
the following benefits: the prevention of limescale forming
on metal surfaces, lower costs for servicing of equipment, and
reduction of downtime for machines. Because there won't
be limescale deposits the equipment that uses heating elements
will see improved performance. Without build-ups the appliances
and other equipment that comes in contact with water will have
an increased life span.
Costs
will also be cut where cleaning supplies are concerned because
you won't have to use as much. Once cleaned the surfaces,
sinks, toilets and other items will sparkle instead of looking
dingy.
Wondering
just how a commercial water softener works? The water
softener unit will have a cylinder that allows the hard water
to pass through it. When this happens the calcium and
magnesium ions will be attracted to resin beads. When
the ions pass through the beads it is exchanged for sodium ions.
These sodium ions make the water soft. The accumulation
of the hard water ions is flushed away down a drain. The
resin will have to be regenerated periodically so that the exchange
process can be repeated.
In
commercial water softeners the regeneration frequency will depend
on how much water is being used and how hard the water actually
is. There are several ways that a commercial water softener
can regenerate. The first one is timer controlled where
the pins on the skipper wheel are set. The timer can be
set to regenerate at 1:00 am or other pre determined time.
They also have a manual override in case regeneration needs
to occur at any other time.
Commander control is a second way to regenerate commercial water
softeners. The process is still in the middle of the night.
This type of control will measure the amount of water used on
a daily basis. It will average seven days worth of water
usage throwing out no or low use days. Then a computer
determines if the supply of soft water is adequate for the next
day's usage. If it thinks there is not enough it will
start regeneration.
A
duplex meter controlled system incorporates two cylinders with
a control valve. This works well to keep the establishment
in soft water. When one system needs to regenerate the
operation switches to the cylinder that is full of softened
water. This system continually switches back and forth
which makes it very versatile for commercial businesses.
It also keeps the cost of salt consumption more reasonable because
it doesn't waste salt or water.