Have hard water. The 1st year living in a place the shower head is slightly clogged and spraying at odd angles. Slight build up of water deposits around faucet. Dishes come out clean. Do I need to purchase a water softner? I spoke with builder who explained its more of a want than a necessity. My concern is I don't want big plumbing and appliances issues down the road. What is your advice.

hard water is relative. you can the dissolve the clogged shower head with white vinegar. takes more soap to create suds with hard water, but that's cheaper than a softener.

My electric kettle would develop scale on the bottom after about 4 uses, after installing a water softener maybe a hundred.

water softener. No one has harder water than me, softer fixed 99% of it,

Water softener. We have very hard water. As above, softener pretty much fixes it. But can't use that water on plants. Too much NaCl.

Softener is definitely worth it.

Make sure you buy, or rent a good one!

Always, dealer support.

My water is mid range did a test on it

What’s midrange? Hardness is measured in grains per gallon or ppm.

check to see how much it costs to run one. i had one that took potassium. price of potassium went from 5 bucks a bag to 25. two bags a month. i got rid of the softener. no damage to plumbing so far. i got 11 years out of my last h/w tank. cheaper than 600 bucks a year for potassium

You poor man. If your water is harder than mine, you have my sympathies because hard water is a nuisance. I would get a softener. We use the regular softener salt. Costs about 15 bags a year at $5-6 a bag.

Have your water tested

I depends? your are flying blind until you get a comprehensive water test. You could have simple harness or a different mineral problem. There are lots of combinations.

Ky. hard water supposedly an attribute for raising fast Thoroubreds & making good Bourbon. Otherwise, it can sure mess up a faucet, valve etc. & kill an electric hot water heater before it's time.

Get the shower heads with the little rubber nipples for jets.
The work like a duck valve in a car door.
Rub your thumb across the face of the showerhead and the jets go back to normal.

Thanks guys.

My water is harder than a priest's junk during altar boy training. A water softener is well worth it. They save on plumbing and all of your plumbing fixtures. Way cleaner clothes and dishes with way less soap. I have one faucet plumbed to hard water for plants and drinking. The minerals are better for you than the sodium.

Hard water is a problem that goes away once it reaches 32 degrees fahrenheit.

No different than a Dentist, small costs has we go,

or several large cost's later on down the road.

You'll pay for it one way or another.

way off topic,
That's technology from the '60's,,,,,Like, 1960

All softeners can use potassium, or the much cheaper Morton Water Saver (yellow bag) in the brine. Not sure why you didn't just use salt, unless your water isn't really that hard.....water stains, metallic water taste and smell, poor lathering of soap, etc

Softener is the answer. Cheap and harmless, all things considered.

If it’s just hard (ordinary calcium carbonate) it won’t come out of solution unless it comes in contact with oxygen, so pipes are fine. But shower heads, faucet tips, coffee makers, kettles, anything that exposes water to the air is going to be a mess.

Water softeners aren’t a big deal, most houses in areas with hard water are plumbed for them, so fetch one up and plug it in. NBD.

You're thinking of ferrous iron.

Depends on what is in it as to the fix, if any.

We use an iron remover salt in ours, otherwise things get yellow and dingy, from toilets to clothes. Prior to our softener, we had to clean things, including the washing machine, with an iron-remover chemical to whiten it up again.

Hard water drinks better, makes lots better coffee, and leaves your showered skin feeling squeaky - softend water like ours leaves skin feeling silky- or a bit slimey - depending on your perspective. Takes more soap/detergent with hard water.

At our rental units, where we first lived, the water is hard, but with little iron? manganese? - no yellow clothes or toilets, but a very slow calcium? build-up. That water remains well, no softener. For the first year after we moved out here, we brought that water out for our coffee....got to be too much hassle

We have a valve on our softener here to by-pass the softener to water plants, lawn, etc. Salt really isn't very good for them, and you don't need to be pissing away money on that portion ofyour water use.

A bit of a PITA, but manageable.

Have it tested by a reputable firm, and go from there, on their recommendation, keeping in mind they are sales oriented. Maybe the best bet is to take it to your ag agent or an independent tester, rather than a dealer.

We have liquid rock here,mostly gypsum.

I just finished doing both shower stalls in the house.

The one in the large bathroom had been there about 7 years and it is a Moen.

The one in the half bath was a Delta and it was put in 23 years ago when we moved in the house.

The large room has a bath tub and got used more than the smaller one.

the Delta is a ball socket valve and has dripped on and off for years,and to replace it i had to tear down a closet.

Sink faucets last about 7 or 8 years on average.

I hate inside plumbing with a passion.

We have so many minerals that when the water dried on a canning
jar it has a white film. You could blow on it and see the dust.

Get a conditioner.

Kinnetico is the Cadillac.
Here's the thing, they have two selling points.

1, They use no electricity, they are controlled and operated by water flow.

2, They use 2 resin beds and switch on the fly.
If you hit the point of regeneration, they regenerate that bed, while treating
the dirty one.

At twice plus the cost of other dealer installed units.

Pondering this, I had an epiphany.


I have electricity, so...big deal.
If my power goes out, so does my pump. No electric, no water.



As for getting unconditioned water if it regenerates?

My house sat here 10 years without one.
So a couple hours, no big deal.
And it's not like it's poison.

So I saved over a thousand dollars and got a different type.


P.S.
A lifelong friend was in the water business, from drilling to taps, for decades.
He pushed using iron out in conditioners. Even if iron wasn't
really an issue in your water. Said "It keeps them clean".

I didn't get mine from him, but...

Ours was about 5 years old and wasn't working, so I tore the head apart.
It had a red iron film on the parts.
Cleaned it all up, and it still didn't work.

Then I remembered Bernie telling me about Iron Out, many years ago.

Treated the brine tank, forced a regent.
Repeated daily for several days.

It finally started working.

So now, every time I add a block of salt,
I put some Iron Out on top of it before the next block.

That way it automatically gets some every few months.

No more issues in the last 12 years.

Iron-Out. Danged if I could remember the name of what we used.

I still keep some for when we forget to put our conditioner on line, off well water, to clean up any residue.

You don't want to treat toilet tank water with it on a regular basis tho- it, being potassium acid, will eat the innards. Ask me how I know....

Drain the tank, treat the iron buildup on the porceline inside, flush...

If you’re having clogs and stains after one year I’d say it’s a no-brainer.

I lived in Breathitt county and the water was so soft you couldn't hardly use soap. It wouldn't rinse off so you put a tiny bit on your wash cloth. If you weren't careful, the shower looked like an I love Lucy episode. A jug of detergent lasted a year and a half because you only used a spot like a nickel.

Long haul trucking I showered all over the place.
We have a lot of limestone here. I have outcrops in the yard and
a big quarry has operated for almost a century within 2 miles.

Old limestone kilns everywhere.

All to say, hardwater js my norma.

Anyway, sometimes I'd shower somewhere with real soft water.
Would have shampoo suds running down my crack clear to the floor.
Couldn't get rid of it.


After we got a conditioner here, we cut all our soap use by half or more.
And your skin feels better too.
All those minerals aren't nice dried in your hide and fur.

Yup. Been places with high iron and calcium. A softener is unavoidable with either. Especially if you have a pressurized power-flush eco turlet. It doesn't take much mineral build up on the valves and moving parts to render them completely useless.

Used a Home Depot self test. Per color chart it was in middle?

Any issues with Dishwasher, refrigerator or water pressure overall.

No stains just a slightly clogged shower head. But I rather an ounce of prevention is worth s pound of cure.

Meh......get some CLR and soak your shower head once in a while.

Does it give you the schits if you drink it?

No

But captain D’s does

Unscrew the shower head and soak it in a bowl of vinegar overnight.
Next day before your shower screw it back on and see how it works.

Other than that, I can recommend an extremely good purifier for drinking water.

Our water here is quite hard. I got tired of replacing all the faucets, etc every few years so I bought a softener. Now a faucet will last many years. It also greatly reduced water stains in the toilets, tubs, etc.
The only way to know is to test it. You can buy test strips from Home Depot, Amazon, Culligan, or many other places.

We water house plants all the time with softened water. Yours must be set way higher than ours. Also, none of the outside faucets are softened. It's a waste of soft water and salt to water lawns, etc with it. If we had a problem with house plants, we could just use outside water for them. Our outside water is about 80 grains, softened to 25.

Culligan said our water was so hard....they probably couldn't fix it. They could help....but no guarantees.

The well is 20 feet deep.

CLR is your friend.

I have reverse osmosis for drinking water.

Mrs slumlord installed it. I got pics of just some legs sticking out from under a sink lol


$600 set up from Amazon. Three 3 years no filter change, still get <3 TDS

Hole e schit!

Less than three tds?

My softest well is 1700.

If you drink fish from anywhere its gonna give you the schits.

I had to look that up.


I figured it was some kind of malt liquor or something.

Awesome white trashy fish place

We don't have places like that.

It was either that or some gas station jerky i picked up.

That jerky the kind in the bag or the one in the jar on the counter, that every farm hand, plumber, teenager etc has had their hands on?

Youre thinking of them pickled eggs at the bait shop with 1/4” of mud in the bottom of the jar type chit.


This was a sealed bag. I usually don’t eat OPJ


Don’t know what I was thinking at the time.

That's probably why one can't just go in the general store and grab a big ol' dill pickle out the wooden barrel any more.

Probably folks would have more 'munity against that China Virus if we could still get the pickle we want from the barrel, even ifn' we have ta' fish for it a bit.

I got mine from Lowe's. Installed it myself (no I'm not a plumber). been going fine for about 5 years now. I paid around $400. I could replace it 5 times before I would get to the cost I was quoted for the "good one" with dealer support.

No water is fine to drink, no smell or irregular taste

We put in a softener after 10 years, replaced the WH while doing so.
The dishwasher bit the dust a couple of months prior, we waited to replace it until softener was installed.
12 years now, haven't replaced any heating elements or appliances since[except new fangled clothes washer and a dryer].

Softener is your friend for sure. We have one, I installed myself. Works wonders and is very efficient. Also have a UV light and reverse osmosis system as well. Our well is very shallow and the water was damn near poison lol. Alot of old coal mines around us.

I put "Iron out" in with each bag of salt.

Its not that hard then.

Do you have a concrete septic tank and distribution box? I got rid of my softener, the salt the softener uses destroys a septic tank and distribution box if they are concrete. After 5 years I looked at my D box and was horrified to find it mostly ****ed.
Plastic D box and Plastic septic it won't hurt.
I just use the RO now and put up with the hard water for laundry and dishes. If I did get another softener I would have the laundry and kitchen sink drain somewhere other than my septic tank.

Regular no-filtered tap water is usually <40 TDS. If I upgraded my galv pipes to poly it would probably be less than that.

Galvanized pipes have caused me alot of problems, most recently a corroded foot valve, replaced it with brass.