Potassium Chloride Instead Of Salt?

Potassium chloride can be used in water softeners in place of salt (sodium chloride). It contains the same ion exchange properties as salt and will work effectively and efficiently in any modern ion exchange water softening system. Many of our customers use potassium chloride in place of salt to keep their sodium intake to a minimum for health reasons. High blood pressure is tied to sodium intake. Remove the sodium and you have one less source of salt in your diet.

It could be (and has been) argued that the amount of sodium left over from a water softener's backwash cycle is negligible, but it's hard to know which expert to trust. To play it safe, most people with blood pressure issues will just switch to the potassium chloride. Something interesting to note though is that the amount of sodium or potassium chloride left over in your softener's water is directly proportional to the amount of hardness in your water. For example, 10 grains per gallon (gpg) of hardness in your water will result in 80 parts per million (ppm) of sodium after running through your water softener. 20 gpg of hardness will be 160ppm, etc. (source: www.mayoclinic.com).

The part I don't understand is that while the sodium or potassium is exchanged equally with the trapped hardness and minerals in the softener's resin bed. It's all rinsed out during the 4th cycle of the regeneration process. How can that much sodium or potassium be left behind? It's not like you're drinking the brine water. Oh well. we'll leave that to a future article.

So with the residue of the regeneration process comes concerns about not only sodium intake, but the effects of the brine pumped down the drain afterwards. Is it better to use potassium chloride? Yes. Potassium chloride not only cuts down on your dietary sodium intake, it is also a dandy fertilizer. Whether you are flushing it out into a septic/drain field system or down a municipal sewer, potassium chloride has many advantages over salt.

It has been argued that salt can harm bacteria in your septic system. Rather than debate that here, we'll just point out that potassium chloride makes for a great fertilizer and most likely will benefit your septic system. With the added advantage of not adding any appreciable amount of sodium to your dietary intake, it would seem that potassium chloride is a wise choice for water softener regeneration. Because of this, any regular ion exchange water softener can be called a "no salt" or "salt free" water conditioning system.

It is important to point out here that if you are using reverse osmosis down line of your current water softener, or even some type of activated carbon filter, you are already "salt free" as the filter will remove nearly all of the sodium.

Potassium chloride costs about $1 per 40 pound bag more than softener salt but for most residential applications that equates to about $24 per year.