replying to Chris Szilagyi, Walt wrote:
Hi Chris - It is important to note that softened water is not healthy for
drinking regardless of what salt or additives you use. All softeners leave
some amount of sodium in the water that is passed through. It is the nature
of the ion exchange process.
For drinking water, you should either have a tap that comes from before the
softener (I recommend carbon filtering that) or putting the softened water
through a reverse osmosis (RO) system for drinking water. I personally do not
like RO water and it hurts my stomach, but the problems with RO water are
another large discussion.
Another option is, of course, to buy drinking water (you can now easily find
good drinking water for under $1 per gallon)
Either way, it is certainly not healthy to drink water from a water softener
due to the significant sodium content. I've seen this nearly put people in
the hospital. Water softener manufacturers will not tell you this because
people would be more hesitant to purchase them. Some will try to tell you
that their softener does not allow a significant amount of sodium into the
water. The sodium level varies with the part of the cycle and it is in fact
significant with all softeners.
This assumes you are using salt in your softener. Some softeners allow you to
use Potassium Chloride, which will leave Potassium rather than Sodium in the
water and this is much safer for drinking, though you should probably have
your Potassium levels checked periodically at the doctor if you use this.
Potassium Chloride, though, is much more expensive and harder to find. It
also does not remove iron from the water like Sodium Chloride, so if you have
iron in your water it is probably not a good option.

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