I'm currently interested in getting a whole house water softener. I had a Culligan salesman come out to the house a give me the whole sales pitch and wanted to know what I should be looking for. I listened to the Culligan man and was impressed with his sales pitch, but are Culligan that much better than other water softener systems?

Is having one a waste of money or can I really save in the long road with appliance longevity and less household cleaning products?

If someone has personal experiece on the subject I'd really like to hear.

BTW, Culligan's price was $3400 installed for water softener and a under sink R/O drinking water kit. The water softener he mentioned had the same size pipes as my house does so it wouldn't effect the water pressure threw out the rest of the house.

do you feel like it's saving you some money when you use your appliances? Dishwasher, washing machine?

Previous owners disconnected it. It needs about $300 in parts, and a few hundred in labor for someone to plumb it in. I decided not to do it because I cannot stand soft water when I wash/shower with it. I feel like I'm never getting all the soap off me.

It's something I'd eventually adjust too, but I've been unwilling to have to go through that process.

That being said, the main benefit I personal see of hooking it up would be that it will eliminate hard water stain build up, which is a bitch to clean if you let it go too long. And, since it's a whole house unit, it will mean better water for washing the car with.

It would probably take decades, possibly never, to pay off the initial cost of the system, plus the yearly costs in maintenance. Don't buy into the savings, because you have to pay off the investment before any savings can be had, and saving $50-100/year in detergent and cleaning supplies takes a LONG time to add up to a few grand.

I don't think it's a money saver, but I do like soft water. It is great for washing the car...

Instead of using sodium salt, I'm using potassium salt. It's about $9/bag instead of $4/bag for sodium. I figure we use about $20/month of potasium salt.

The effect on soap lather/rinsing means that you should use less soap or back-off a bit on the softener regeneration frequency.

A flow-based regeneration system is better than a simple timer-based system.

I've been looking around at some other units. What would these numbers mean that are next to virtually the same looking unit...


25,000 GR
30,000 GR
40,000 GR

Also, I was searching around the internet and ran across some water softeners that don't use salt and are virtually maitenance free. I'm not sure how they work but they say that it doesn't add anything to your existing water.

But I don't know if they actually prevent that or not.

I would LOVE to be able to wash my car and not have to dry it. And yes, I've used the Mr Clean Car wash...doesn't work all that well.

But I ended up moving. I liked Kinetico since it didn't require continual salt refills. The other nice thing was that it didn't run on electricity which means you didn't have to reset it everytime the power went out. Something to consider living in Florida. It was comparably priced to other whole house systems. If you deducted the anual cost of salt, it was actually a lot less expensive in the long run.

Thats usually "hard water" buildup, which **** in it like lime/calcium deposits. A softener gets rid of a lot of that, or all of it, if you believe their marketing.

You've got companies like RainSoft and Culligan who sell VERY expensive units, but they are also VERY good.

Then you can go and get a Kenmoore or GE unit from Sears or Home Depot for like $400-600 bucks.

I can't believe that RainSoft/Culligan/etc have THAT much markup in their product. There has to be something different IMO, but I honestly don't have a clue.

BTW - My RainSoft unit isn't HUGE. It's maybe 2 feet wide and about 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall. The salt tank is supposedly good for around 6 months of general water use for a 2-3 person home.

My unit came with the house when I got it, I didn't purchase it.

When they built my house I asked to get a LOOP installed, this makes installation easier. If you don't have one, you can get a plumber to do it for you. You will need also access to a drain, so when the water softener timer kicks off the regeneration cycle during the night it will drain some water to your drain. Finally you need an electrical outlet to plug in your water softener.

The water softener installation can be done in an afternoon or you can get professional installation. You need straight pipes CPVC (PVC for potable water) and some 45 and 90 degree elbows, hack saw, pipe cleaner, glue. Everything else is included in the kit which sells for ~$500 for 30K grains capacity which is good enough for a family of 4. On mine the softness is setup at 21, it's been running trouble free for 5 yrs+. Sears will analyze your water for free and recommend settings. I just add Morton salt pellets from time to time; it's sitting next to my hot water tank in my garage.<ul><li><a href="http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/search.do?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes&amp;keyword=water+softene r&amp;vertical=APPL">water softeners @Sears</a></li></ul>