For whatever reason that I'm incapable of understanding, when my house was built in 2005-ish, the builder and owner at the time opted to not spend about $50 and put a soft water loop in while it would have been cheap and easy. As such, I have a main that comes in the side of my house with no real method of being able to install a whole house filter and softener without doing a lot of extra work.

I have 2 options -

1. Preferred option - tapping into the cold main in the attic above where it comes into the house and running overhead lines across attic and into my detached garage, through filter and back. Only problem is that I'm having a hard time finding the actual main where it comes through the attic - that is just me not taking the time I need up there to find it. More importantly though, I want to make sure I don't have branch lines coming off to feed my washing machine, sink, etc.

2. Tapping into the main underground prior to entering the house, running underground, under a sidewalk, punching through the side of the garage and through the filter and back. Probably the best overall, but I don't want exposed pipes on the side of my garage and chipping/drilling through concrete makes this much bigger of a project than I would like it to be.

My exterior is hardi-plank siding with what I assume is an OSB skin it is nailed to, so using any sort of detection equipment to look into the walls and get an idea of pipe routing from the outside is probably out. However, I should have access to the interior walls and am wondering if there is a device that is capable of doing what I would like that is somewhat cost effective and actually works.

I see ads for Walbot and it looks like it works to me.

Walbot

You could get a Seek Thermal imager for your phone ($200). It's more expensive than the Walabot, but their marketing seems very misleading based on a lot of their reviews. Many of their 5 stars seem to be fake. The Seek Thermal is basically a FLIR for your phone. One of the guys here (general contactor) has one for checking for leaks inside walls and likes it.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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You could get a Seek Thermal imager for your phone ($200). It's more expensive than the Walabot, but their marketing seems very misleading based on a lot of their reviews. Many of their 5 stars seem to be fake. The Seek Thermal is basically a FLIR for your phone. One of the guys here (general contactor) has one for checking for leaks inside walls and likes it.

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Well crap.. So you are telling me that people lie about that stuff? I knew this internet thing was a scam.



Seriously I hate to hear that. I thought that was a cool item.

You're forgetting about the hose spigots. They should branch off the main BEFORE the water heater split ideally. You want the main on the water softener minus the hose spigots. For this reason alone option 2 won't work.

Option 1 and find the point in the main after the hose spigots but before anything else.

Not totally noninvasive, but this would give you a pretty good look.

https://www.amazon.com/DEPSTECH-Semi-Rigid-Inspection-Megapixels-Smartphone/dp/B06XS8MYVL

Picard said:

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You're forgetting about the hose spigots. They should branch off the main BEFORE the water heater split ideally. You want the main on the water softener minus the hose spigots. For this reason alone option 2 won't work.

Option 1 and find the point in the main after the hose spigots but before anything else.

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You didn't read the part that I don't care about the hose spigots, or I didn't state it then. But I've stated it now, I don't care about the hose spigots.

And, frankly, I'm not re-plumbing my entire house to save using a few gallons of conditioned water when we wash the car during the summer or when the girls play with the water hose on occasion. There isn't enough useage in 100 liftimes to justify that cost and headache. Were I to built a house, I'd plumb it that way from the start, but that isn't my case here and the ROI isn't in the same universe.

schmellba99 said:

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Picard said:

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You're forgetting about the hose spigots. They should branch off the main BEFORE the water heater split ideally. You want the main on the water softener minus the hose spigots. For this reason alone option 2 won't work.

Option 1 and find the point in the main after the hose spigots but before anything else.

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You didn't read the part that I don't care about the hose spigots, or I didn't state it then. But I've stated it now, I don't care about the hose spigots.

And, frankly, I'm not re-plumbing my entire house to save using a few gallons of conditioned water when we wash the car during the summer or when the girls play with the water hose on occasion. There isn't enough useage in 100 liftimes to justify that cost and headache. Were I to built a house, I'd plumb it that way from the start, but that isn't my case here and the ROI isn't in the same universe.

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It's not the wasted water, it's the latent salt content of softened water. If you water your yard at all, you're basically salting it. Watering it a few times probably won't do much because the salt content is very low, but over a year or two of regular watering you're dumping a lot because it doesn't just go away. It builds up in the soil over time.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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schmellba99 said:

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Picard said:

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You're forgetting about the hose spigots. They should branch off the main BEFORE the water heater split ideally. You want the main on the water softener minus the hose spigots. For this reason alone option 2 won't work.

Option 1 and find the point in the main after the hose spigots but before anything else.

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You didn't read the part that I don't care about the hose spigots, or I didn't state it then. But I've stated it now, I don't care about the hose spigots.

And, frankly, I'm not re-plumbing my entire house to save using a few gallons of conditioned water when we wash the car during the summer or when the girls play with the water hose on occasion. There isn't enough useage in 100 liftimes to justify that cost and headache. Were I to built a house, I'd plumb it that way from the start, but that isn't my case here and the ROI isn't in the same universe.

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It's not the wasted water, it's the latent salt content of softened water. If you water your yard at all, you're basically salting it. Watering it a few times probably won't do much because the salt content is very low, but over a year or two of regular watering you're dumping a lot because it doesn't just go away. It builds up in the soil over time.

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And sodium is a clay defolcculant, leading to high density and water impermeability. Muddy spots, standing water, dead grass, etc.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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schmellba99 said:

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Picard said:

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You're forgetting about the hose spigots. They should branch off the main BEFORE the water heater split ideally. You want the main on the water softener minus the hose spigots. For this reason alone option 2 won't work.

Option 1 and find the point in the main after the hose spigots but before anything else.

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You didn't read the part that I don't care about the hose spigots, or I didn't state it then. But I've stated it now, I don't care about the hose spigots.

And, frankly, I'm not re-plumbing my entire house to save using a few gallons of conditioned water when we wash the car during the summer or when the girls play with the water hose on occasion. There isn't enough useage in 100 liftimes to justify that cost and headache. Were I to built a house, I'd plumb it that way from the start, but that isn't my case here and the ROI isn't in the same universe.

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It's not the wasted water, it's the latent salt content of softened water. If you water your yard at all, you're basically salting it. Watering it a few times probably won't do much because the salt content is very low, but over a year or two of regular watering you're dumping a lot because it doesn't just go away. It builds up in the soil over time.

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1. The salt content of any softened water (my softener [really more of a conditioner than anything] is not salt based, but we'll go with salt based assumptions for now) is still exceedingly small. You would have to irrigate the hell out of the yard to get any negative effects. I'm also already on the coast, so salt isn't an unusual thing here.

2. See above - I don't water my yard, I don't do much with outside hose spigots outside of select activities, none of which are frequent enough to justify literally thousands of dollars and significant interior and exterior work to revamp existing plumbing lines due to what amounts to no actual problem.

For perspective - the salinity of softened water is roughly 10ppm, give or take a few ppm. The salinity of seawater is about 35ppt. Galveston Bay is about 5ppt salinity. That is going from parts per million of softened water to parts per thousand of seawater.

Allright dude, you rock on finding hairs to split and applying your specific situation universally.

Bottom line - I 100% don't care if i water the yard on occasion with conditioned water, and my "softener" isn't a salt based anyway. And I am 100% not paying the several thousands of dollars it would require to re-plumb my house because there may be salt somewhere in the water. I don't water my yard as it is and if my grass dies - less to mow anyway.

I'm out, got some useful information from this thread I suppose.

If you don't care, you're good. Mostly just into for others. Some people don't realize how bad it can be and just assume watering with softened water isn't a big deal because of relatively low salt content. A year or two later, they're wondering why all of their grass is dead and nothing will grow anymore. Sounds like your situation didn't warrant concern though.

You can rent thermal cameras from tool & equipment rental places including Home Depot.