@stoveguyy,

There are several issues / questions in your post:

1. You have a common setup - softened water at all the indoor taps except the cold in the kitchen.

2. You can easily make the cold water in your kitchen smell / taste better by adding an under-sink carbon filter. Such a filter will remove chlorine, tastes, odors, VOC's and various other things. Don't go down the rabbit hole though -- a simple carbon filter will do wonders.

3. If your softener is adjusted properly and reasonably new, you shouldn't have a "salty taste" even at 25 gpg (I also have 25 gpg hardness and my soft water doesn't taste salty).

4. Taste is a subjective thing: Water softeners remove calcium, magnesium and iron and replace those ions with sodium ions. Does that taste better - It's hard to know.

My good friend has installed softeners and repaired them for 25 yrs. he installed one at my parents house and i can taste difference with sft water at their house. i cant even drink it. cold water in their kitchen is great.. bathroom near my old bedroom was soft water. ugh, couldnt stand getting a drink at night. i grew up with that water. so, i also can tell difference with water at my house. i used to work at soda machine manufacturer. we made beverage dispensers. . spent lots of time in lab. hard water, soft wter, filtered water, even deionized water was available. we needed it for testing our sensors. i hate drinking soft water.

We have both hard and soft cold water in our kitchen (different sinks) and our family can't tell much of a difference. Our water comes from the town wells and our hardness is 24 grains per gallon, 1 ppm iron.

@stoveguyy

Again, taste is subjective. I'm not going to try to convince you that "it's all in your head".

That said new softeners that are properly configured don't produce water that has the same taste and feel as they did 40 years ago, for example.

Put a simple carbon filter on your unsoftened cold water in your kitchen and you should be good.

Ha, i did have a whole house carbon filter in laundry room for kitchen line then it started dripping so i took it out.

coffee at parents house is 2x better tasting. they have no hard water filter as well.

i have a brita pitcher in garage fridge. takes up too much space in kitchen. i have it rough.

Hi @stoveguyy

So I'm not clear at this point, is there a question?

If you want to improve taste and odor (as well as remove some chemicals) at a reasonable cost and hassle, use a carbon filter on your drinking water. All filters require maintenance.

I use Pentek Big Blue cartridge holders and KDF / Carbon filter.

If you want an easier solution - use the Pentair Everpure. It's got a lower capacity (in treated gallons) but is nsf certified and easy maintenance.

how long will brita cartridge last if i use 1 pitcher per mońth?