Nothing of value to add - but I am interested here.

Me too. I'm wondering if the plumbing forum would be better for asking this?

We installed a water softener in the current house, and while glass staining (spots) are noticeably less - you still see them. They can be cleaned up easily - but squeegee is still here.

Next house walking it shower, glass fixed / hopper window above. (Bench layer is not shown) Framing plan for 2" drop 2x12 to 2x10s to accommodate for custom shower pan.

Brian

When you buy LibertyMutual - you are buying habitual Liars, Cheats and Scum.

I have super hard water. Had a horrible time with hard water deposits on every sink and faucet in the house and the shower head kept clogging up. Glasses were always spotted, and my stainless steel sink drove me crazy with that scummy look. We installed a whole house water softener and the difference is unbelievable. I haven't cleaned hard build-up off any faucet or shower head since. The stainless steel sink still shows some spotting, but it's minimal.

The downside is that the water is very "slippery" now. (Yes I realize I sound like a moron typing that.) I drop glasses during hand-washing all the time. I'm also not a fan of the taste of the softened water, so have started buying the large bottles of water to drink.

We just refilled the salt container for the first time in about a year. It's programmed to flush overnight as needed (once a week maybe?) and beyond that we haven't needed to do a thing for maintenance.

We are on a well, and have really hard water. We rent a system from Gibson's, and they come periodically to resupply the salt, and do water testing. I've never noticed our water being slippery, or having any "taste". Maybe I'm just used to it. I don't like glass shower doors (we only have walk-in showers), so can't tell you if the water still spots or not. Never notice anything on the dishes.

I've had water softeners for over twenty five years. I would not own a home without one. With the hard alkaline water we have in San Diego County it does seem to be hard on water heater tanks. I had to replace the a tank after five years. I've not had any issues since we moved into a new home with a tank less water heater in 2006.

Our 2 person household goes through 40lbs of salt pellets in about six weeks. Never done any maintenance., It runs a self clean cycle when it's needed.

One thing I don't like about vacations is I know there will be hard water where we stay.

Thank you. Some good information so far. Don't forget to name the brand/model of softener you have.

Joyce, Gibson's sounds great, but they only service the WI area. Didn't see anything like that in So. CA.

Just about everyone here (on well systems), has one. You simply get a water test kit form the county and follow the instructions, pay the fee ($15), and they tell you what's in your water and how hard it is. It's pretty easy to then determine how large of one you need. We have a relatively cheap one from Home Depot (GE). They're pretty easy to install and program.

If you're water is really bad, you can always call a company like Culligans, but that can also get pricey.

I have a water softener that's about 15 years old, IIRC, and likely pretty senile, but it still works. It's there to help soften, but also to take out iron, which is very bad, even with an iron filter ahead of the softener. In fact I need to have the thing "rebedded," which means you take out the old resin filter media and put new stuff in. I also need to swab out the brine tank, which collects crud, but I just added a new bag of salt, so I'll wait a bit on that. None of this is very hard work, but it's just one more thing.

I don't remember the brand, but we had hard water in our old house and had spots on the counters near the sinks and my hair had a coating on it. Things were noticeably better when we got the softener!!! We managed the level of salt output in order to avoid the 'slimy' water feel. In our new build, I'm researching 'water conditioners'.. it's an alternative to water softeners but I don't know too much yet. One advantage is that your drinking/cooking water won't be softened and will still have the minerals.

We have very hard well water in our part of MN and have always had a water softener. Growing up my parents had a couple of different brands, Rainy and another common one I can't recall. I don't think they were sized correctly for the type of water and usage but they did help. My sisters with blonde hair actually had red hair at points due to the excessive rust in the water! My husband and I have had Kinetico with iron filter for over 20 years. It's done a wonderful job at keeping up with our family of 6. and basically no maintenance other than adding salt and occasionally cleaning out the brine tank. We can always tell when it's getting low on salt because our soaps don't suds up as well and it just starts to feel 'harder'--not as slippery. Kinetico uses no electricity and has no moving parts to fail. Part of their advertising touts the length of time you have before you need to add salt (I think they say up to 6 months!)...that may be true for a home in the city that already has treated water, but for a home in the country, using well water we still had to regularly add salt every 3-4 weeks. Not a big problem all in all. We also didn't soften our drinking/cooking water to avoid added sodium.

We have a whole house system, but still need to squeegee the glass shower panel. No other issues, though, other than that slippery feel.