On Sep 9, 2:42 pm, (Doug Miller) wrote:
In article m, wrote:
On Sep 9, 9:55 am, Phisherman wrote:
On Sun, 09 Sep 2007 11:37:57 -0400, Kurt Ullman
wrote:

Soften the water going into the water heater. Don't soften the cold
water.

With respect, that is the single biggest mistake made when installing
a softener. If you soften only the cold water going to the water
heater then only the water heater sees soft water. you may improve the
length of the service life of the water heater but the rest of the
home sees HARD water and you've lost any benefit of soft water.

Not true. You've lost some of the benefit, but not all -- the combination of
the softened hot water and hard cold water isn't as soft as the soft water
alone, but it also isn't as hard as the hard water alone.



Installing a softener on only the cold service to a water heater is
done whne a proper installation would be more difficult and more
expensive but IT IS THE WRONG THING TO DO.

Every appliance, every pipe, every faucet, and every fixture that sees
cold water sees HARD water.

Well, duh.

Anywhere in the home that hot and cold are
mixed you have HARD water.

Nonsense. You have water that's partially softened.

If that's how you choose to install a
softener then save your money or just run it through a paper
shredder... same difference.

Nonsense. Mixing them reduces the benefit, sure, but it doesn't eliminate it.



If you don't believe me, then get a hardness testing kit and test the
water coming out of any faucet when cold and hot are running, but be
prepared to be very unhappy.

What, you think that it will show the same hardness as the hard (cold) water
alone? Think again.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.



We have a water softener that uses the salt pellets. We've been
having a lot of dry weather here this year and we have saved water
from the laundry to water outside plants. It doesn't appear to have
caused any problems. Our sprinkler system doesn't use softened water
but we put it on flowers and newly planted vegetable seeds....