Thinking about getting one... My previous house and this current one have hard water stains on all of the spigots and my dishwasher seems to do a crappy job.
Any first hand feedback would be helpful
I used to have a nice hague water softener and if doing it again, would go to sears or home depot and get one of their cheaper units that is easily serviceable and has parts easily available. Any time we had an issue with our hague it was a large service call fee and parts were super expensive.
Go cheap, go mass produced, and get one that has lots of consumers so there are people who have probably experienced most of the problems you might have already and have fixes for them.
I would not go with one of those all-in-one Sears or Home Depot ones. They tend to not have the same features, media/resin, are not as efficient, do not have the same value proposition, and fail much more quickly.
I would find a local guy and buy one that either has a Clack or Fleck valve, has metered (usage based) refreshing on the system, is two-tanked. I think I paid ~1k for a 60k grain system. It refreshes once a week or so.
Make sure you get your water tested to understand how many grains of hardness you have. That will set how big (grains) of a system you need. You want the system refreshing ~1 time per week.
Reason for 1 time per week? (Besides, perhaps, the cost of salt?)
Water softener:
Water goes through resin. Resin is polystyrene beads (aka resin or zeolite). Resin is negatively charged and hold a positive sodium ion. Resin exchanges sodium ions for the hard water ions (magnesium & calcium). Electronics calculate when it's time to back flush the resin with salt water; based on the water hardness which is programmed in, it determines how frequently to regenerate. To regenerate - it soaks the resin in strong salt water for a bit, then back flushes out the excess salt, along with the magnesium & calcium, leaving beads that are now bonded to a sodium ion.
It's not rocket science. AFAIK, a $400 system will do just as good a job as a $3000 system. I picked up my system from Sears when the local Sears was closing down - got a great discount on it. It's been running for around 10 years now with no issues. I have very hard water with a lot of iron in it. Whatever chemical additive is added to the water softener salt for helping take out the excess iron seems well worth the extra $3 per 40 pounds.
Reason for 1 time per week? (Besides, perhaps, the cost of salt?)
Water softener:
Water goes through resin. Resin is polystyrene beads (aka resin or zeolite). Resin is negatively charged and hold a positive sodium ion. Resin exchanges sodium ions for the hard water ions (magnesium & calcium). Electronics calculate when it's time to back flush the resin with salt water; based on the water hardness which is programmed in, it determines how frequently to regenerate. To regenerate - it soaks the resin in strong salt water for a bit, then back flushes out the excess salt, along with the magnesium & calcium, leaving beads that are now bonded to a sodium ion.
It's not rocket science. AFAIK, a $400 system will do just as good a job as a $3000 system. I picked up my system from Sears when the local Sears was closing down - got a great discount on it. It's been running for around 10 years now with no issues. I have very hard water with a lot of iron in it. Whatever chemical additive is added to the water softener salt for helping take out the excess iron seems well worth the extra $3 per 40 pounds.
Where did I say you need a 3k system?
From what I was told you should size based upon grains and usage but the refresh shouldn't be longer than a week. So don't oversize the system. Also don't undersize since you'll be wasting water and salt. This was from my wife's cousin who has been installing them for decades in a very hard water area. He wasn't trying to sell me a system, just giving me advice.
I've been drinking softened water since 1978 and I still roam this earth.Next question, I'm reading mixed things about whether it's "safe" to drink softened water. we never drink bottled water and usually drink straight from the tap and drink lots of it. Is it safe to continue to do so? what if I get a softener that can use potassium chloride? Are all of the warnings just a way to upsell a reverse osmosis system for drinking water?
DrPizza gave an earlier summary of how softeners work. soft water basically has extra sodium ions. if you are on a low sodium diet, it is worth investigating. because our hardness level is about 10 grains, the sodium level is like an extra bag of potato chips a day.
a compromise: some people only soften their hot water.
"In an 8oz glass of 15 grain softened water there is 28.12 mg of sodium."
http://www.merleswater.com/blog/bid/144148/Drinking-Softened-Water-How-Much-Sodium-in-Softened-Water