Advice Please - Andy (CWS)

djl,

Another point of view based on personal experience... if I may.

I have had the opportunity(?) to experience the worst the water treatment industry has to offer from both a local franchised water treatment company and an online water softener huckster.

The local franchised water company was only interested in the sale and provided no service either warranty or customer pay. They were a one man shop and were overwhelmed with any business they got.

The online softener seller drop-shipped shipped a wrong item and refused to make it right. His attitude changed dramatically after my check cleared... enough said on that.

Point is, you can get great product both locally (franchised or independent) and online and you can get royally screwed before and after the sale from both sources as well. Online sales by definition offer no substantive service (unless you accept "move it closer to the phone so I can see it" as service) and rely on the homeowner to do the labor when warranty repair is needed. I chuckle when I hear my favorite control valve was designed to be repaired by anyone in less than 30 minutes. No thank you, I'd rather have a control valve that was designed not to require service and has proven itself in the field for decades and decades and decades.

When a salesperson says that anyone can install a water softener and that anyone can learn to solder their motive is to close a sale and move on to the next email.

Personally, I'd rather do business with a real company, brick and mortar or online, that is in the business to make a living with an investment in overhead and inventory rather than someone sitting at his kitchen table with no investment other than a satellite dish and a PC supplementing his income who can disappear in an instant and leave his customers with no warranty at all.

Hit the Yellow Pages and call at least three local INDEPENDENT water treatment pros. They will be the companies under "water treatment" that don't offer brand name equipment but rather industry standard softeners and ROs.

Give each an opportunity to offer suggestions and provide you with a quote to meet your water treatment needs. IGNORE ANY THAT DON'T TEST YOUR WATER THEMSELVES, regardless of how well they say they KNOW your water, as they can't speak intelligently to water treatment without knowing what needs to be treated.

Ask lots of questions. Softening the entire house or just the water heater (a bad idea)? Warranty, parts & labor or just parts, how long and on exactly what? Install, permits required, licensed plumber? Routine maintenance and costs? Do they stock parts? Response time for emergency (water leak) calls? If they don't explain things to your satisfaction that is a good indicator of how you'll be treated after the sale.

Are all your treatment needs being addressed?

Ask your neighbors if they have any water treatment experience. They might tell you who's good or who to avoid.

Come back here and post the specific recommendations and hardware components with the costs and we'll give you our opinions. Then compare between local independent offerings and those of Culligan, Kinetico, and ECOwater.

Bear in mind that the fact that companies like Kinetico, ECOwater, and Culligan have survived in the marketplace a very long time speaks to the value per dollar they offer for many people who have experienced that they are not the RIP-OFFS some unscrupulous competitors rant that they are.

There are instances where you pay more and you get more. An informed consumer can easy tell when those instances are among their choices.

Much Thanks
Dear Justalurker,

Much thanks to you for a very reasoned and detailed response. I'll do exactly what you say and will let you (all) know how I made out. I miss our conditioned / filtered water so much I'm tempted to just "get it done" but can see that your advice is most prudent - especially if we're talking the kind of money that's involved.

Thanks again.
DJL

Re: Much Thanks


I have learned (the hard way) that the Charles Emerson Winchester III ( of M*A*S*H fame) mantra works very well when considering water treatment and that is... Do one thing, do it very well, and then move on.

In the long run it will be worth your time to thoroughly investigate all your options and then make an informed choice that will provide you reliable service and quality water for many, many years.

To Andy, Kevin, Gary, and Justalurker.

I just received the information on our water here.

7 grains hardness per gallon - mostly magnesium and calcium (lime).

TDS about 1200

chlorine varies (depending on time of month - city adds it once/month) between 0.5 and 1.5 ppm.

We have three full bathrooms and an indoor jacuzzi but only five people in the house - two adults, two high school age girls and one fifth grade boy. We have a dishwasher, a washing machine, and hopefully an RO unit. I don't know what else to include that uses water.

Don't feel an obligation to answer if this info. doesn't change your recommendation. Thanks again to my distinguished experts - Andy, Kevin, Gary, and Justalurker.

DJL

...Oh, I forgot to add Scout our medium-sized dog who (in this hot summer weather) drinks his share of water too!

DJL

There are many advantages afforded the customer that deals with a local,
full-service water treatment dealer that installs and services what they sell.

The only advantage to having a system drop shipped to your door is the up
front savings, but the cost rise from there and there is no one on the way
when problems occur. The customer is on his or her own with little recourse.

Thanks for the that water test info.Your numbers don't chime very well, though. With only seven grains (+- 120ppm) hard and typical chlorine, I just wonder how you could have 1200ppm TDS.

Something else must be in the equation or the test numbrs are inaccurate.

The number of people and baths in your case make no difference in the equipment recommendation I made with the twin-tank system. Single tanks systems may have to compensate for that.

Andy Christensen, CWS-II

I fully agree.


Not true and to prove it, here's what you have said previously in this thread above about your Kinetico softener:

Please explain what that means since you disagree with me and now say that the number of people and bathrooms "makes no difference". Also explain how "single tank systems compensate for that".

Also, you said:

Question, how many regenerations per day or per week will the Kinetico 2040 have to do for djl's family with 7 gpg hard water?

That data will give djl an accurate means to compare Kinetico's supposed salt and water savings to regular softeners that on average regenerate only once per week.

You also said:

This is just a salesman's hype but, it goes to my last question above: How many regenerations must the Kinetico 2040 do to remove 300,000 grains of hardness in 24 hours?


As they should but many do not. I have replaced many Kinetico softeners that were only 10-15 years old. Mostly because of the rip off prices the one'n only local dealer wanted to 'fix' them, and, their insistence that they won't sell the parts and give instructions to the DIYer that wants to save money and fix their softener themselves.

Why is it that most all other softener or control valve manufacturers have troubleshooting and repair instructions on the internet and Kinetico refuses to do the same?

Could it be so folks don't see all those small tiny very close tolerance inexpensive blow molded plastic gears the Kinetico control valve uses to get their non electric centuries old water power technology to work? And the difficulty in 'fixing' their control valves?

I probably should mention the cheap float in the salt tank they use to set the salt dose lbs., and that it, and the brine line, is under full main line water pressure at all times except when the softener is in the brine draw cycle position of a regeneration. That's a very cheap design; like most of the big box store brand softeners. Or.. that you can not change the hardness setting without taking the control valve apart and changing a disc to another certain numbered disc; that only the one'n only local dealer can sell you and will usually insist on doing it for you for a high priced service call.

So Andy, why are Kinetico softeners so expensive when they use the same resin and salt tanks and resins that most other softeners use?

h20man, why are Ecowater brand softeners so expensive when most of all the parts are the same as on/in the big box store brand Kenmore, GE, Whirlpool, North Star and mortonsalt.com softeners?

I don't see the ECOwater system as being expensive and some of the parts may
look the same as the private label brands listed, but they are not the same ...

djl,

If I may digress to the reason you posted...

With the number of people in your home and two high school age girls to boot, not to mention the hot (summer) dog :wink:, I recommend you give serious consideration to a twin resin tank softener design a la Kinetico. Properly sized and setup for your water conditions and usage a twin resin tank softener will be utterly transparent and you'll never know it's working. You'll need to check the salt (or potassium) weekly but that's about all you'll need to do.

You'll have soft water 24/7 with no worries that your teenagers came home late and showered when a single resin tank softener was regenerating getting hard water into your water heater and plumbing. No worries that you'll run out of soft water before that 2AM regeneration that a single resin tank softener does because this was a heavy laundry week.

There are other twin resin tank softeners available but none have the advantage of not needing electricity. No worrying about a power glitch that requires a clock reset or stops a softener regeneration in mid cycle.

There are those few who rail against "centuries old water power" and I take their ill considered statements with a 40lb bag of salt. The simple fact is that water power works well enough for the Hoover Dam and is powerful enough to have created the Grand Canyon so it's more than adequate to power a water softener and it costs NOTHING. Water power is failsafe... if you have no water pressure then you won't be worrying about soft water :wink:.

A Kinetico will do a great job for your needs and the new Kinetico RO seems ultra flexible with an impressive warranty!

Kinetico water treatment products are the least complained about water treatment hardware on all the self-help forums. Seems that the only people who grumble about Kinetico are the people who have to sell against them.

If you can work the Kinetico into your budget and amortize the extra cost over 15 or 20 years I'm confident that you'll look back at the purchase as a wise investment.

In the interest of full disclosure... I do not work for Kinetico or a Kinetico dealer. I do not have a water softener to sell you or anyone else... and that's the truth.

Reverse Osmosis and Steam Distillation are you best methods of salt reduction in drinking water.

This issue may soon become a thing of the past...
I am currently Beta testing a method of softening household water that does not utilize the ion exchange softening process.
So far - so good

I believe the term "saline" is misleading. There is NO salt added to water by a softener. There are sodium (Na) ions exchanged but the chloride (Cl) ions go down the drain. Salt, as in saline, is sodium and chloride.

With only 7 grains hardness in djl's water the ion exchange rate will be low. As hardness levels in the water increase that would be more of a concern.

Potassium Chloride (KCl) can be used as a regenerant instead of Sodium Chloride (NaCl) and is considered a salt substitute.

Anyone on a low salt (sodium) diet at the direction of a physician should not make any changes in their diet or consumption without discussing it first with their doctor.

You are correct

Gentlemen,

First, I would ask that Gary stop posting to my thread. First of all, you never answered my question - I asked for your recommendation. Instead you couldn't resist (as usual) form carping on everyone else who's trying to help me out. I haven't been in the water business a single day in my life, but even I could answer some of the comments you made in your last post.

The point Andy was making is that even if the Kinetico takes additional regenerations over the traditional type (it likely will since it's a smaller unit), the point is its capacity to supply unlimited soft water cannot be rivaled due to the twin-tank design. We've had many an occurrence in our family, especially when all 8 of our children lived at home (a year ago) where the soft water from our Eco system "ran out." So no matter what system you're selling, Gary (Clack valves notwithstanding), there's going to be down times and the 2-5 am window doesn't account for the whole of those down times. If the unit doesn't regenerate till then and the usage was unusually high before, you're out however many hours before the regeneration takes place. So you're not paying lots of money for just three hours.

Furthermore, with the Kinetico unit, you have less parts to go bad since your factoring out all the electronics. Here in NW Arkansas there are a number of outages which makes this an issue for us, the Kinetico system having no electronics to "go out" with the power outages.

Additionally, Gary, I don't know if you have a relationship with the Lord Jesus, but if you don't you should and if you do, it needs some repairing. You seem just achin to pick a fight with whoever writes, no matter how well-intentioned they are. I don't mind an honest disagreement, but your manner of communicating on this and other websites tends to always return to the abrasive. As I said before, I don't know a lot about softeners, but as a pastor I know a fair deal about the human heart. Please get the help you need from the only One Who can give it. And that help is free. And the warranty on that is better than lifetime.

Though I understand and respect your right to write on any open forum, I would appreciate you not contributing further to this one.

To Andy, Jusalurker, and Kevin - I tried to get better numbers today. A local WaterCare man came but did what seemed to me to be a very lacking set of water tests - used strips of various kinds dipping them into the water and reading them against different color palettes. He admitted to not even understanding the readings thoroughly!! So I helped him! The hardness appeared to be between 5-6 grains. There's 2 ppm nitrates and 0.3 ppm nitrites. The chlorine reading seemed rather negligible. He was talking about installing either a CareSoft EM unit or CareClear softener and a RO-18 RO unit for approximately $1,390. I was unimpressed with my inability to get through to them on the phone and with the installer/salesman's lack of knowledge about the products. The only attractive thing about the whole deal is that there in town and the price, though I learned long ago, "You get what you pay for." I also have a church friend who privately complained to me that getting service is tough - they're really understaffed right now and a recent storm "re-arranged" their office a bit (which might account for some of their service issues). On the upside, regarding labor, he said they charge a flat fee of $60 for each service call plus whatever parts might be needed. The warranty was singularly unimpressive. The RO membrane, for example, was only a one-year.

So do I buy two of these (over time) to compensate for the price of the Eco unit or close to two and a half of them for the price of the Kinetico?

Getting weary of the whole business...
DJL

regarding salt
Dear Gentlemen,

I'm sorry I didn't see the postings on "salt" till I sent my last post. Thankfully none here are on a salt-restricted diet (yet). But I was always under the impression good RO unit eliminated the salt (or more exactly, the sodium). Am I mistaken about that?

H20 man - how far are you from completing your new process and from marketing an actual unit which conditions the water w/o ion exchange? I know that R&D can sometimes be months if not years from actual production and marketing. You've got my interest!

Thanks for all your help.
DJL

Re: regarding salt


I installed the system last week and my girlfriend is the test subject.
I hope to have solid results and observations by the end of the year.

I noticed that your water has nitrates - I see a steam distiller in your future.

Steam distiller? So the RO unit won't knock out nitrates?

DJL,

You're almost there... not to worry.

If the local guy didn't impress you before the sale odds are he will be underwhelming after the sale. Better to know now.

I agree with your feeling that you will be best served by a twin resin tank softener so look at your choices in those.

You have mentioned Kinetico, Culligan, and let's add industry standard units from independent dealers.

All things considered the feature set of the Kinetico softener and RO seems to appeal to you with your only reservation the price. I'd sit down eyeball to eyeball with the Kinetico dealer and try for a better deal.

Bear in mind that paying a dollar's worth for a dollar is the best deal around. Getting what you pay for is a good deal.

As always... free advice is worth what you pay for it.

Re: regarding salt


You are exactly right.

A good RO pretty much filters everything in the water but the H and the O.