wrote in message
oups.com...
I live in Phoenix and my dishwasher stopped working. I am now considering
a water softener.

But then I hear that you don't want soft water for your plants, and I
have a automatic irrigation system around my house. I also have a
swimming pool with auto-filling system -- is soft water good or bad for
a swimming pool (just for topping it off with water due to
evaporation)? In reality hard water is bad as eventually the pool
water gets so hard that you have to drain it. Would soft water fix
this and indeed be a good thing?
In any case, on to my real question. I am considering soft water
primarily to protect my appliances, showers, bathtub, etc. Would it
make any sense to just install the soft water system before my hot
water heater? This would protect my hot water heater, dishwasher,
washing machine, and we'd have mostly soft water for showers/baths.

Also, is it possible that my hot water heater is filled with this stuff
as well, making my problem worse? My house is 7 years old, never had
soft water.

Thanks!

I lived in Chandler for 17 yrs. Also sold water softeners for Sears.
Technically, soft water is bad for pools as softened water is somewhat
aggressive and would tend to leach calcium out of the plaster walls of the
pool. I don't know if using it to keep the pool full would add that much
over time because of the evaporation but it would sure cause you to use much
more salt in the softener as it would have to cycle more often. I didn't
have a salt water pool but correct me if I'm wrong. I thought, that used
salt and electricity somehow to create a chemical reaction similar to
chlorine to kill bacteria rather than making your pool salty like the ocean.
Installing the w/s just before the water heater would certainly protect that
and the dishwasher, but as for the rest of the appliances. I remember that
not much actual hot water was used to wash clothes (also sold washers) or
even in the shower as the cold water sometimes was near 100 degrees, at
least in the summer months. I barely had to add hot water to take a
comfortable shower, certainly not like here in N. Ill. where I now live
again. A water softener on both hot and cold water would certainly help the
kitchen and bath fixtures from being limed up also. And finally, as I
remember, 7 years was the average life of a water heater around Phoenix due
to the natural corrosion of the valley's water and build up of calcium in
the heater. It should be possible to install a softener so that the outside
bibs and the pool are not softened. By the way, adding a water softener to
your drinking water would only add the amount of salt found in an extra
slice of bread a day to your intake and then only if you drink 8 glasses of
water a day.

Tom G.