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One house we like has a water softener listed as one of the prime features of the house. What are the advantages of this? Does it mean there will be less wear and tear on your plumbing or is it just a matter of which you prefer when you shower?
There is only an advantage if the home would have hard water otherwise. It's not just a luxury.
That's not unusual... We have a water softener by necessity to correct our water that is high in iron and other minerals. It's not just about getting a nice lather on your shampoo... it's about whether the untreated water is drinkable or tastes bad, or leaves rust or calcium stains on toilets, appliances and sinks.
I absolutely hate them. I hate that slimy feeling when taking a shower. Dialing it down didn't work for me. I let it run out of salt and never refilled the one I have in my winter house. It would not be a selling point for me.
There is only an advantage if the home would have hard water otherwise. It's not just a luxury.
That's not unusual... We have a water softener by necessity to correct our water that is high in iron and other minerals. It's not just about getting a nice lather on your shampoo... it's about whether the untreated water is drinkable or tastes bad, or leaves rust or calcium stains on toilets, appliances and sinks.
I used a water filter when I was on well water. No problems with taste or laundry.
Location: Finally the house is done and we are in Port St. Lucie!
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Originally Posted by AlaskaErik
I used a water filter when I was on well water. No problems with taste or laundry.
It really does depend on the area. Here, a filter would only last a very short time (if I was only on well water) like only a month. I don't even think a water softener would help. It is just that nasty.
When we were looking at lots, an absolute deal breaker would have been well water. We are on the city system and still needs filtering.
Now if it was in the country in Michigan, well water there is great. Of course that comes with the caveat depending where one lives.
I personally do not like the taste of softened water but do love that you use MUCH less soap and shampoo. Seriously, a little dab'll do ya.
I used a water filter when I was on well water. No problems with taste or laundry.
What kind of filter or softener you need depends ENTIRELY on the chemistry of your local groundwater. It's not the same everywhere, or even in the same town or neighborhood.
It makes cleaning easier. In my limited experience, hard water build up is a nightmare to clean. And it gets on everything that touches the water, even your hair. Of course it depends on how hard the water is. We had well water in MD that I thought was pretty hard. Moved to a house in ID on city water and it was so much worse, even a weeks worth of build up was like cement. Had a softener installed within a month.
My dad (in the country in Michigan) has super high iron content in well water. He has a separate iron filter and a softener. Unless removed, the iron stains everything orange after a while. Laundry, dishes, sinks toilets, everything. The softened water tastes odd kind of sweet. He has a separate faucet that bypasses the softener in one sink so you can drink the minerally well water if you wish. That sink is orange. The outside faucets grow big blobs of minerals.
We had a two tank softener in California. It used the alternate potassium chloride(?) whatever. Rock salt (sodium chloride?) was not permitted. The two tank type uses less salt/potassium and puts less salt into the water. It was great. Really cleaned up the white film on the dishes. Kept our showers and appliances clean as a whistle. We hardly ever had to add salt/potassium.
We were told Detroit city water is soft and a softener is unnecessary, so we actually sold one I bought on Ebay and did not install one. Mistake. there is a lot of phosphate? whatever makes the white crystals. It cruds up shower heads, tea kettles, dishwasher, and our tankless water heater and some of our dishes. I wish we had kept the one we had and installed it. We could add one now, but it is simply not a priority for us (air conditioning comes first).
If you get a water softener, you will feel like you cannot get the soap off you when you take a shower. They claim that is because you are actually cleaner. Not sure if this is true, but the feeling gives me the heebie jeebies. You get used to it over time.
I forget the name of the brand we were convinced was far better than others. They cost thousands. I do not see them mentioned by doing a quick google search, so they are probably out of business. After doing some research, I learned that apparently most two tank systems are just as good, and can cost thousands less. Apparently the one I was sold one had the best marketing.
Also so you do not get taken, magnetic systems are a scam. T they are based on a test done by some university using a giant magnet of unbelievable power and an very long length of pipes zig zagging through the magnetic field. The results were marginal but significant. Scammers will quote form this study and try to sell you a system of clamp on magnets or an electromagnet system they claim will work (even though to make it work it would need to be bigger than your house). Don't let the bs marketing fool you. There is a reason these magnets are not installed in every house with water issues and it is not simply that the rest of the world is not as clever as you are for finding the ads. Don't get scammed. Magnet systems are complete BS. You can benefit from my months of research on the issue.
Last edited by Coldjensens; 04-05-2017 at 11:49 AM..
I absolutely hate them. I hate that slimy feeling when taking a shower. Dialing it down didn't work for me. I let it run out of salt and never refilled the one I have in my winter house. It would not be a selling point for me.
You can't "dial down" a water softener. What you are doing by adjusting the hardness is controlling when the regeneration takes place. By turning it down, you are telling it to pass more gallons of water before regenerating. So you get completely softened water, followed by hard water when the resin bed is exhausted of sodium ions until it regenerates. You're not getting a mix of softened and unsoftened water, unless you install a mixing valve to allow you to control the proportion of each into your house, which almost nobody does.
We had a two tank softener in California. It used the alternate potassium chloride(?) whatever. Rock salt (sodium chloride?) was not permitted. The two tank type uses less salt/potassium and puts less salt into the water. It was great. Really cleaned up the white film on the dishes. Kept our showers and appliances clean as a whistle. We hardly ever had to add salt/potassium.
Having an extra tank doesn't change the chemistry of water softening. If you used less salt, it was because:
1) Having two tanks means you can run the resin bed until it's completely used up, rather than programming in some headroom (waste) to insure you never run out of softened water
2) If the brine flow pattern during regeneration was significantly different with the two tank system, it might be more efficient and require less brine volume to recharge the resin bed
3) The one tank system may have been regenerating too often. It's also possible your two tank system isn't switching from one tank to the other soon enough, and you have some amount of unsoftened water
Quote:
If you get a water softener, you will feel like you cannot get the soap off you when you take a shower. They claim that is because you are actually cleaner. Not sure if this is true, but the feeling gives me the heebie jeebies. You get used to it over time.
This is true. If you are really stupid you might think the slimy feeling is due to softened water not stripping body oils off your body, but this is clearly not the cause, since the slimy feeling only occurs AFTER you use soap. If it was due to non-stripping of body oils, you'd have this feeling before using soap too. At both our houses, the cold water tap at the kitchen sink is not softened. You can switch to rinsing your hands with cold water after lathering with soap and the slimy feeling goes away instantly.
Quote:
I forget the name of the brand we were convinced was far better than others. They cost thousands. I do not see them mentioned by doing a quick google search, so they are probably out of business. After doing some research, I learned that apparently most two tank systems are just as good, and can cost thousands less. Apparently the one I was sold one had the best marketing.
Sounds like Kinetico. Overpriced, and not any better than a system built around a good Fleck control valve. Less flexible, since they can't be reprogrammed by the homeowner.
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