"Walter R." wrote in message
...
There is surprisingly little info on water softeners on Google. With most
water sources being on the hard side, I would expect a great deal of info
on ways to soften water. There is a very large number of websites which
pitch obvious frauds at high prices, such as magnetic water softeners and
"ion" softeners. Never seen anything like it.

Anyway, I would like to install a real "salt-type" water softener to
combat our hard water. Home Depot only sells a GE miniature water softener
for $ 449, Lowes sells a Whirlpool for $ 427. That's all in the local area
(San Diego).

The only other reputable looking brand that I could find on the web is the
Fleck 5600 series of water softeners. However, there is no factory website
for this brand.

My plumber offered to replace my old, broken down softener with a Fleck
for $ 2,050, which seems excessive, considering that the unit costs only
about $ 400. (Very little plumbing adjustment required.) Another rip-off.

Are fewer people using/installing water softeners? Maybe I can draw on
the experience on other people in this Group?

Thanks for any input.


We bought our Fleck online from these guys:
http://www.qualitywatertreatment.com..._softeners.htm

DH installed it in about two hours, and most of that time was figuring out
how to program the settings/options. It also took a few minutes to fill the
resin tank, and that was much easier to do with two people. Just don't buy
Kinetico. We had one of those (it cost $3k!!) and it died in 10 years. When
it failed, they wanted $4k to replace it. Yeah, right. The Fleck is about
1/10th of that, and it's been working like a champ for over a year now.
We're already ahead.