Dear Water experts,

I'm looking for your option whether to make further investment on Water softening in our apartment with 11 flats in Chennai ? We are getting water from bore-well which has hardness and other factors (Please see the attached bore-well raw water test report). We are using this water for non-drinking purposes like bathing, washing, etc . The softening and pumping involves 3 stages (please refer the attached image):

• First, pump water from bore-well into sump 1.
• Pump water from sump 1 to sump 2 through softener.
• Pump water from sump 2 to overhead tank.

We are running this system for last one year but the problem is that the softener capacity is 1000 L p/h and we are supposed to do regeneration at least once in every two days (In practice, we are doing once in a week )

Since last month, the regeneration did not consume salt water solution (I think, there are blockages in the softener). So we are bypassing the softening the system by directly connecting the Bore-well pump output to sump 2.We are thinking of upgrading the existing softener with 6000 L p/h which will cost about Rs. 55,000/-.

Now my questing are:

1) Difficult to follow the Manual regeneration process: Are there any softener with automated regeneration available in the market ? If so, how good they are ?

2) Too many pumps used and high E.B bill: Is it possible to reduce the number of pumps used in this process ? So that we can save the electricity bill ?

3) Value for money & effort: Considering the above questions in mind, is it really worth to upgrading the existing softener (6000 L p/h - Rs.55,000) ? or shall we simply live (non-drinking purposes) with this water untreated ? What will happen in the worst case ?.

If there is no big harm in using this water, I prefer to not soften the water as the maintenance/cost is more (More importanatly it's annoying to continuously followup. And if you don't followup, all the investment will be wasted).

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Regards, Palani