Hard Water Versus Soft Water?

[primo]

Hi,

I will be draining half of my pool (to lower CYA a bit). I have a Culligan water softner system in my house due to hard water. The question I have is:

Can I use soft water to refill the pool?

One hose bib is connected to the water softner and the other is not (regular hard water). What type of water is best to top off? Hard or Soft???

I apologize if this was asked before.

Thanks for your help!

[PoolGuyNJ]

What kind of pool?

What kind of hardness? If it's calcium, what level in ppm is it.

Scott

[waterbear]

You can use the soft water BUT if you have a plaster or fiberglass pool you will most likely need to bring up the calcium hardness again if it drops too low. If the calcium is high to start with then this is the best way to lower it to a more manageable level. Calcium harness is not important for vinyl pools.

[primo]

Thanks for your reply,

The pool is 24000 gallon inground concrete with hydrazzo finish, DE filter with hot tub and rock features and waterfall. I use liquid chlorine and bleach. The unsoftened water definitely has Calcium. Have to find out PPM. In the past I always used the regular water (not connected to water softener) and wanted to know if using the soft water was ok to do.

Thanks for your help.

[Pool Clown]

I wouldn't try to use your water softener to fill your pool. Most of the water softeners will only "soften" about 500 gal at a time, then it needs to be backwashed or "regenerated". Theoretically you can do it, but you just need to be around every so often to make the thing regen, which can take about 45 min and lets not forget that the thing runs water the whole time its regen-ing. So your using/paying for twice the water.