Garagelopnik - Water Spots

"MM54" (mm54mk2)
04/25/2017 at 21:09 • Filed to: Garagelopnik

As spring rolls in, it brings with it allergies, fast-growing grass, and car washing. I have well water, and it’s very hard. The house is tended to by a softener (which works too well), but the spigot in the garage is tied in before it, which makes sense for 90% of garage-spigot uses.

For me though, this will not do. The straight-from-the-hole-out-back water leaves incredible water spots anywhere it dries, and as we know you can’t always towel dry everything before any water decides to evaporate.

Enter the “I’m going to have to explain this to every single person who ever walks into my garage” contraption, seen below. The lower part has been in place for a while now, since the spigot is in the back of the garage, and running a hose the whole way across the garage every time you need to use it gets old.

Not my handprint. I should probably paint over that.

The upper part is what’s new. In the left (upstream) canister resides a 5 micron filter, intended to be used to purify water for a whole house. In the right (downstream) canister resides a resin cartridge, which is basically a mini water softener that you have to manually regenerate by soaking it in brine every now and then.

The valves are set up to allow the use of straight-from-the-ground water (which isolates the filters) or direct the water through the filtration setup, so I’m not senselessly clogging up the filter and depleting the softener for tasks like a pre-rinse on a car, or pressure washing the driveway. A hose reel will mount on the wall to the right, which puts it right inside the door - much more convenient than the current setup, where it’s coiled up and hanging on a hook on the wall.

I just finished putting together the top (useful) section this evening, tomorrow I’ll flush it out and make sure all is well, and maybe even wash a car to test it out.

DISCUSSION (9)

CodyVella > MM54
04/25/2017 at 21:29

Out of curiosity, where did you pick up the canister & resin cartridge and how much did it run you? I’ve been interested in trying this type of set up as opposed to a salt softener.

Urambo Tauro > MM54
04/25/2017 at 21:29

Nice setup! How high off the floor is this?

MM54 > Urambo Tauro
04/25/2017 at 21:32

Thanks! The center of the filter body is about eye-level, I hung them while standing on a step stool. I store stuff along the wall right below there, so I had to keep it out of the way. The valves are very easy to reach.

MM54 > CodyVella
04/25/2017 at 21:34

It’s still basically a salt softener, it just lacks the electronics and brine tank that a in-house system would use. The housing is from home depot, the cartridge is from amazon, it was about $20. A search for “Pentek ws-10" should find it

Urambo Tauro > MM54
04/25/2017 at 21:42

That’s cool. I also like the way that you’ve got the spout/fitting angled away from the wall, but not at a right angle that could strain a hose.

What material is the wall behind that? Is it just painted drywall?

MM54 > Urambo Tauro
04/25/2017 at 21:49

The angle is eyeballed to match a hose bib, and basically is meant to make it easy to connect to and, like you said, prevent it from straining the hose.

Behind it is just slightly-textured painted drywall. I mounted the canisters on those little pieces of 1x6 so I could get at least one screw on each into a stud.

Urambo Tauro > MM54
04/25/2017 at 22:06

Have you thought about putting some kind of backsplash panel there? I don’t know that you’d really need it though, since it sounds like there’s no sink or drain pan underneath, and you probably won’t be making too much of a mess there.

MM54 > Urambo Tauro
04/25/2017 at 22:22

Once I mount the hose reel on the wall, a leader hose will attach to the visible fitting pretty much permanently. As for changing out the filter and such, I’m not too worried about it.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > MM54
04/29/2017 at 08:55

Enclose it with a cabinet arrangement and you’ll never have to explain it.

Fun project, though.