We are just hanging out in Yuma, doing some projects and enjoying our time here. One maintenance chore that we repeat is recharging the water softener. It is an ion exchange system. The theory is that hard water passes through a filter media that is negatively charged via sodium ions which grabs onto the positively charged hard water contaminates such as calcium and magnesium. Below we will post most of the steps required to recharge the softener. Here in Yuma we need to recharge the softener after about a week; the water is very hard here. The soft water does a few things for us. It significantly reduces the calcium and scale build up on our valves and plumbing fittings in our trailer. That greatly extends the life of these components. It also greatly reduces the amount of soap that is needed to do the everyday washing chores. Once you have soft water it is easy to become accustomed to it and cause you to dislike hard water. We're hooked.
Steve points out the small upgrade we recently did to our water softener. We replaced the original plastic fittings with nice brass fittings, including a nice brass quarter turn ball valve on the output.
Close up on the new brass hardware.
After removing the softener from the inline water hoses, the first step to regenerate is to open the top. It is a screw on lid with an o-ring seal.
Once the o-ring seal is broken, the cap screws off very easily.
Some of the filter media, tiny resin beads, are present on the top of the softener and inside the lid. We use a cup of water to wash the beads back into the softener and this also provides a surface that is optimum for the o-ring seal.
Don't forget the inside of the cap, which is where the o-ring is captured.
Next step is to pour a standard box of salt into the softener.
We keep the cup of water handy when the salt clogs up the opening in the softener. The water washes the salt down and we can continue pouring the salt.
Once all the salt is in the softener, we fill the remainder of the softener with water from our cups.
Then simply replace the lid. We close the output valve and cap the input fitting...
Then we give it a good shake and break up the filter bed. The resin beads tend to clump as the water becomes harder.
We let the softener sit for an hour or so and give it a second shake up half way through the waiting period. When the waiting period is complete, we hook the hose back up from the water hydrant and trickle water through the filter for about 12 minutes. Once the salt taste is gone from the water the softener is good to go again for another week in Yuma. Elsewhere we get a couple weeks and sometimes even more out of one regeneration.
Normally we set the water softener underneath the slide skirt up against a wheel hub. It is shady under there and protected. Here in Yuma, we set the Softener right behind the water hydrant and electric stand. We wrapped the softener with shade screen and used small spring clamps to hold the screen in place. You can see the 10" cartridge water filter under the nose of the red kayak. This arrangement makes it a little easier to get at the softener for regeneration day, and Yuma has more generation days than anywhere else we have stayed. In all this arrangement has worked out well for us and does make the regeneration process a bit easier. The other thing you can see in this picture from the bottom are the flexible sewer hose which we run in standard residential plastic gutter and even cap with the same gutter to shade UV and protect from pecking birds. The gutters set up easily and give us a nice constant slope to the sewer connection. The thick black line is the 50A hookup cable, we shade that with foam pipe insulation from Lowes. The blue hose is our fresh water into the trailer, we usually shade that hose with pipe foam as well but have not gotten around to it yet. The red hose is the back flush for the black tank. This way when dumping we don't have to change hoses, simply turn 1/4 turn ball valves. There is a Y-splitter hose fitting with two ball valves on the output of the 10" cartridge filter.
Last project on this post; a door kick plate. The exterior door to our trailer has suffered some degradation. The faux soft touch leather lining the interior of that door has started to break down in the lower hinge side corner. You can see the scourge below.
We purchased a Schlage kick plate from Build.com Below is a screen shot of the item.
We decided to try and fit a standard kick plate over the degradation and even slip it behind the angle at the perimeter of the door interior. Steve holds the plate below. We thought the plate may be thin and soft enough to just score with an awl to cut to length. Turns out it was thicker and harder than anticipated, so the awl scored the line and the cutting was accomplished with a hacksaw and new blade. It cut easily and cleanly. We cleaned it up further with a file prior to fit checking and final install. We purchased a 34" plate for our 30" door to be sure it was long enough to go under the door angles on both sides. We knew we would be trimming the size and cut a small amount from each side to keep the mounting screw holes symmetric on the door.
Gari performs QA on the installed product. We couldn't find a black plat to match the door metal and screen door plastic, but this plate is Aged Bronze and seemed close enough for trailer work.
Wide view of finished product. WE think it is an improvement on the degraded soft touch material.
Close in view of finished installation. It is noted for detail that the top screws seemed to only go through an 1/8" plywood, whereas the bottom row of screws definitely bit into metal. The oval head screws come with the plate and we drilled a very undersized pilot hole and were very careful not to over torque especially the top row of screws.
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