? water softner

What to look for in a unit? What do the grains have to do??? 12,000 or 16,000 or other?

The amount of grains relates to how much softening can be done before recharging. How hard is your water?

https://www.aquatell.com/pages/how-to-properly-size-a-water-softener

One of the little tricks to look out for is some false advertising regarding tanks size and grains. Sometimes you will see claims of 40,000 grains, but only 1.0 cuft of media in the tank....doesn't add up.

On a mobile unit, 1.0 cuft of resin should be plenty regardless of how hard the water is. A whole house under hard water conditions really requires 1.5 - 2.0 cuft of resin in my view.

Work the calculator that is in that link above to find out what you really need. You might only need a tiny tank for the van with 8,000 grains.

Dumb question.....

Aren't the softener units you guys use on the truck, similar to a DI tank? In other words they are just a cylinder shaped vessel that has an in and out at the top of the vessel.

How would you "recharge" these? They don't have a tank like a home softener to hold salt on board, right?

That is what most are running.

If it has a manual recharge head, you have to pour in the salt and then let the water trickle through the tank for about 15-20 minutes. It can be a pita since you normally have to pour out some water first and that tank isn't light.

With an auto head, it just quick connects to a brine tank that you keep in the garage when it is time to recharge.

With either method, you have take periodic tests to know when it needs recharging.

Sounds like a pita! But then dragging my 70 pound RO/DI in and out of my truck at every house is no fun either.

Never an easy way to success.