Anyone have a whole house water softener?

[evident]

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

 

[slag]

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.

 

[ctbaars]

No. But our water quality is quite good. I drink right out of the tap too.
http://65.36.213.246/dwqr2015/pages/page-10-12.pdf
That said, I get stains too.
Your water quality is quite good too.
http://www.bcwsa.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2014-CCR-Fox-Run.pdf

Run the dishwasher through once with CLR

 

[LegendKiller]

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.

 

[DrPizza]

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.

 

[zardthebuilder]

when we bought our house, it came with a 1998 Kenmore water softener. it still works. i can't imagine us ever going back to living with hard water.

i bought the test kit in the first link below. about $10. the second test kit is more accurate, but has a range of 0-30 gpg. about $17.

tip: scaling starts at 7 grains. if you want to save on salt, set your softener so that the output is something less than 7, but more than 0 (for us, it is about 10 grains in - 6 softener setting = 4 out). my neighbor sets his at 11, so he is using almost double the salt and about double the sodium content.

http://smile.amazon.com/Industrial-Test-Systems-WaterWorks-481108/dp/B00DIJ0W30/
http://smile.amazon.com/Hanna-Instruments-HI38033-Total-Hardness/dp/B0085WWK2G/

 

[LegendKiller]

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.

 

[WilliamM2]

I know the Whirlpool I got at Lowe's works better than our overpriced Culligan ever did, and uses about 1/4 as much salt. It softens only when needed based on usage, usually every three days or so.

 

[feralkid]

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.

Exactly.

Simple, reliable and mass produced is the way to go.

Ignore the snake oil salesmen.

 

[KentState]

I believe my prior home had a Culligan sourced one. It was maybe $2k for all of it, though my memory isn't great. I was the only one living in the home so it ran maybe twice a week at the most, but made a dramatic improvement in water quality. Also had a reverse osmosis water filter installed for drinking water.

 

[DrPizza]

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 wasn't referring to what you paid. Systems run as high as $3000 if you want to listen to the high pitched salesmen who will convince you that theirs is special. I'm not sure you would necessarily waste salt, or at least, not that much more. 1 cubic foot of resin vs 2 cubic feet of resin - you'll regenerate twice as often, but only need half as much salt when you do. Or, at least it seems it would be that way. I'm sure that in reality, that's not very precise, but based on how they operate, that approximation shouldn't be too far off. But, essentially, it's like telling someone that if they drive a lot, they should get the car with the option of a larger gas tank, because they'll save gas by not having to fill up as often. <I could be wrong, and happily await someone to demonstrate that I'm wrong.> And, at least around here, most people with softeners have their own wells. They're generally not worried about "wasting" water, since it's equivalent to washing a load of clothing.

 

[SparkyJJO]

I almost did a Home Depot special but went with a unit that has a Fleck digital valve head on it and a KDF85 regenerable filter cartridge installed (to pre-filter iron and remove sulfur). It works really well, and given the sulfur content in my water I'm glad that I got it instead of a cheap unit so that I don't have to bother with changing $50 cartridges in a canister filter every 6 months-ish to remove the sulfur.

I got the softener from ohiopurewater.com and installed it myself.

I did get one that's too big for just me, so it does hit the time limit to regen long before I've used the max capacity. I was planning ahead for eventually having a family here though, and even with the waste it still only costs me under $5 a month for salt as I estimate I use less than a 40lb bag worth each month.

All that said, if you don't have bad iron or sulfur problems and you're just dealing with hard water, the cheaper units from HD or Lowes or whatever are probably fine.

 

[boomerang]

I too got mine from ohiopurewater. You can get a model that regenerates on water usage, not by a timer. Single tank models, twin tank models, there are options. You need to get a water test kit at Lowe's or Home Depot and follow the directions. When you have the results, call the people at ohiopurewater. They are nice folks to deal with.

http://www.ohiopurewater.com/shop/customer/home.php

Just know that although the assembly of the softener itself is a breeze, that plumbing will be involved. Only you know if that is something you can handle yourself or will have to have done. Regardless, you will save a ton of money. The markup on softeners is pretty huge.

 

[evident]

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?

 

[KentState]

I went with potassium chloride when I had mine.

 

[boomerang]

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?

I've been drinking softened water since 1978 and I still roam this earth.

 

[zardthebuilder]

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

 

[evident]

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

Hmm... what about getting a whole house water softener, and then an under cabinet reverse osmosis system for the sink / fridge water? that should eliminate most of the sodium consumption.

 

[richardycc]

I got the Whirlpool 44,000-Grain Water Softener from Lowes under $500 about 10yrs ago, no need to spend that much on a softener...they have a wifi one for almost $800, seriously, do you really need to check and run your softener with your smartphone?