"Geoman" wrote:

28 grains is HARD water.


OK so far.

I suggest that you either go as cheap as possible or you get one that can be serviced by
pros. Heres why.

After usage with such hard water the unit has to 'recharged'. This is where they take the
material inside and replace it.

The "material" inside is standard resin bead, no different between Sears labeled
softeners and any other brand. Softeners work by transferring sodium ions from
sodium chloride (salt) to the resin bead. Running water through the resin causes
calcium ions in the water to swap places with the sodium ions. Eventually, the
resin loses its ability to attract either type of ion and needs to be replaced,
but as long as the water is not contaminated or has excessive amounts of iron,
we're talking years between resin replacement.

One might argue that a Sears valve does not use standard parts and thus may be
more expensive to repair. My experience has been that the only part needing
repair after 10 years of an electronic control head were some o rings and the
siphon diaphragm. Cost less than $10 from Sears parts.

The cheap ones from Sears isn't worth the effort, the more
expensive ones are about the same as Sears, but the companies who sell them usually can
and do change this material. They 'may' change the Sears, but why should they support the
competition?


Taking the valve body off the resin tank of a Sears softener isn't particularly
difficult. In fact, since Sears publishes their exploded parts diagrams on their
web site, you could argue that a Sears unit is easier to service by the
homeowner.

While it's understandable that an independent dealer might not want to service
Sears, it's a bit short sighted. Could be an opportunity to sell other filters
or even an kitchen RO system. Certainly any competent plumbing company should be
willing to do it. And if a last resort, why wouldn't you call Sears?

Some of our customers with such hard water buy the cheapest ones they can and change them
when they die. Others go for the frills and salt savings. Its a tough choice for you to
make.


Once the plumbing is in place, swapping a relatively inexpensive $300 softener
every 15-20 years is not difficult to do or an unreasonable expense. If you have
to do it sooner than that, you probably have too much iron or other contaminate
in your water and could use an iron or other prefilter. In any case, since most
people move every 5-8 years, is it worth buying a arguably longer life unit for
the next owner?

Salt savings is a harder argument to sell. Salt is inexpensive to begin with.
Even if you use 40 pounds a month (which is unlikely with any demand based
softener in a residential application), we're only talking $36 a year in most
places.

While I've seen some manufacturers claim salt savings, even if we're generous
and say it's 25% a year over a regular demand type unit (sounds impressive),
that's less than $10 a year. And that savings can only come from the recharge
cycle - the sodium transferred to the water is the same for every unit.

Try a search in Google. Water Softener ratings

Good advice, but you should have stopped here.

Also, please remember that the harder the water the better it is for heart tissue.

Hard water is nothing more than water with slightly elevated amounts of calcium.
You could get as much by drinking a couple of glasses of skim milk a month, or
take a general purpose vitamin. Most people say hard water tastes better. In
fact, many of the bottled water brands add minerals (including calcium) for
taste. On the other hand, there's an argument that says that elevated mineral
content like calcium could contribute to kidney stones, if you are susceptible
to them.

Soft water is bad for the heart, it has no minerals in it, and the added salt is also bad for
people with high blood pressure.

Soft water has exactly the same mineral content as hard water from the same
source, with the exception of the calcium ions, which were replaced with sodium
ions. Unless you have a reverse osmosis system, everything else gets passed
through. The amount of sodium ingested from soft water for most people is equal
to that found in a couple of slices of bread. Think about it: Most new
construction kitchen cold taps are plumbed to a hard water line for cooking. How
much non kitchen tap water do you drink? For that matter, how much kitchen tap
water do you drink?

You may consider Calcium Chloride, but it costs almost
double of the price of salt.

I suspect that calcium chloride will have no effect at all. I think what you
meant to say was potassium chloride. While KCl is almost double the price of
salt in percentage terms, we're not talking about huge dollars per year here.