Need some professional advice

I have read through several pages of questions and responses and appreciate all of the advice given.

I still have two questions:
I was looking at the "Whole House WH-99" system from Lapure (Conditioned Water), but if I understand correctly it encapsulates...not softens...right? Is that bad?

I am also looking at a Whirlpool water Softener (WHES40), but my wife says that she does not like the feel or Taste of soft water (our city water tastes really good but is very hard...lots of calcium). I guess my question is if I filter the water like the fridge does will it still "taste" like soft water?

Thanks,
Jeff009

 

If you do not remove the impurity, how could you claim that you have conditioned water? There are companies that claim their system does not allow the calcium to stick to the pipes. There are more benifits to having soft water then just saving your plumbing. The soap savings alone will more than pay for the equipment. Tea, coffee and sugar use will decrease. If you don't remove it, nothing changes. I lived in Austin for 13 years and know what type of water you're dealing with in SA.

The feel of soft water to some people takes getting use to. There's a way around that also. Bleed 1 gpg hardness back into the soft water. She gets the feeling of hard water and the benifits of soft. As far as the drinking water, if she doesn't like the taste, get an RO as well. It will remove up to 98% of the sodium.

I've been in the water treatment industry for 18+ years. From a warehouse manager to a service manager and a saleman. I've seen all kinds of products marketed for water treatment that don't do anything. Don't cut yourself short. Go with a proven method. Water softeners have been around for about 100 years. They have proven to "condition" your water.

 

Well, here we go again with the "Nashville" report in your link. That report was so inaccurate and so ridiculous that it was recanted by city officials and pulled from their website. Yet, this link still wants people to believe that softened water is BAD for you.

Moreover, it states that SOFT water will leach lead from plumbing. Now, are they talking about rainwater or softENed water? Rainwater, which if it has a very low pH, can be aggressive. SoftENed water has long been proven to be neither more or less aggressive than its pre-softened state. Their generalization by saying "soft" makes it confusing at best and misleading at worst.

Nanotechnology somehow alters the chemical make up of the hardness to help prevent scaling. The water is still hard but at least your pipes won't get clogged, which is quite rare except in the worst of conditions. I still hear complaints about coffee pots spottong badly and other consequences of hard water damage.

Phosphaphates, bi-phosphates and poly-phosphates encapsulate iron molecule to prevent them from being oxidized and causing rust. This is great form preventing sidewalks from staining with irrigation systems. They do nothing for hardness. They break down with high temperatures.

Whirlpool softeners are (with Sears and Kenmore) the bottom of the bucket in quality and life expectancy. They are marketed by people who know nothing of the product, by a store that can't install or service them and by a manufacturer that doesn't trust them past one year. In a nutshell, avoid them.

The slippery feeling she is commenting on needs to be better understood and then appreciated. Your skin is far cleaner and less dry with softened water than without. A simple demonstration can show that to be true. Taste can be improved with an RO to remove sodium and a host of other elements for greatly improved drinking water.

Andy Christensen, CWS-II

 

Thanks you for the advice/info. I wasn't really worried the soft water was bad to drink, just if you thought that the saltless system would work. I have a 50 year old house and just re-modeled the kitchen about 1 month ago(new appliances, cabinets, the whole sha-bang.) and we are already getiing hard water spots in the Granite composite sink, and those water spots are a bear to get off the granite counter as well(yes, I sealed it...twice!) not to mention the inside of the new dishwasher.
Another question:
I have never had a water softener before...so be gentle.
The Water company says:
Average hardness is: 305
Grains per Gallon: 17.7 (I am assuming that this is the recomended setting)
If my wife still complains about the "icky feel" could I set the gpg down to say 12 or 13 or would this defeat the purpose of having the softener in the first place?

 

You have to multiple that by 1.1 to get compensated hardness. So you have 20 gpg hardness. The only way I have found to rid the water of the "slick" feeling is to install a cross over pipe between the raw and the soft with a ball between. By opening the ball valve slightly, you can control the amount of hard water bleeding into the soft. 1 maybe 2 gpg is all that is needed.