@bkboggy,
Our home was built in 1921 in the city of Grand Rapids, MI. We bought it and moved in in Jan 2003. One month later we received a call from Rainsoft asking if they could come out and speak to us about our water. I told my husband "they just want to sell us something." But he wanted to hear what they had to say so we scheduled an appt for the next Friday. At that time, we had a MultiPure solid carbon filter unit sitting on our counter hooked up to our faucet for our drinking water. I thought we were doing just fine.
Since we live in the city, I assumed we had soft water. My daughter lives in the country, same county, and had water so hard that her toilet bowls were Crayola orange everyday if she didn't scrub them. Ours never had even a hint of orange. She has a water softener in her home now and you can taste the salt in her drinking water. Plus my soap won't even lather at her house.
Friday came and so did the salesman. He said he was going to test our water to see how hard it was. He took out 3 empty vials from his kit. He filled the first one with water from our tap, added a drop of yellow dye so we would be able to see changes in the water, put a cap on it, shook it, and set it up in our kitchen window. He did the same thing with our Multi Pure water. Then he took out his mini Rainsoft hardwater purifier. He pushed it onto our faucet and filled the third vial through a little plastic tube connected to his RS purifier, repeating all the steps he did with the other two vials. Now there were three vials of yellow water sitting in our kitchen window.
He sat down in a kitchen chair with his back to the window. He began to talk about hard water and all the negative things that happen when you have it in your home. He talked about dry skin, the extra cost for laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, cleansers for walls, floors, counters, the bathrooms, the stove and anything greasy. Now he had my attention. When we moved in, we discovered that the previous owners had left us a nasty mess all through the house. The worst was the kitchen stove. There wasn't one-half square inch from the top of the stove, across the burners, down the entire plastic front to the floor that wasn't covered in large hard drops of grease splatter. The 5 plastic knobs had been scrubbed, soaked, dishwashered, and still they were covered in grease after a month of trying to clean them. I was ready to throw them away and buy new ones.
The vials had my attention, too. I could see that some white lumpy things were forming in the first 2 vials placed on the window sill. The third vial was still just clear yellow water.
He asked if we liked to drink a hot beverage. We both said yes to instant coffee. Then he asked if we had a small saucepan he could use to heat water for our coffee. I gave him one. He said, "First I need to wash out your pan because it still has soap scum in it that doesn't get rinsed out when you have hard water. The same goes for anything that comes out of your dishwasher. It's still covered in soap scum." Yuk! His mini RS purifier was still hooked up to our faucet so he turned it on, let water run into the saucepan, and a foam began to form. It was from the soap scum. Then he washed out 3 cups and 3 spoons. He filled the clean saucepan with water through his RS purifier and heated it. We each made our own cup of coffee from the products we like to drink. He asked us to taste it and tell him what we thought. I said, "It doesn't feel like the bumps are being scraped off my tongue. I've never noticed that about a cup of coffee until just now. The coffee tastes very smooth and clean." I don't remember what my husband said. This was our saucepan, our cups, spoons, and coffee. But, it was his Rainsoft filtered water. That's why it felt different on my tongue and tasted clean. After the hot coffee, we each had a cup of cold water. It tasted great! I washed my hands with our usual bar of NO color and No fragrance soap that we order from a real soap company for our office and home. It actually lathered instantly. It never did that before.
By now the first 2 vials in the window were pretty full of white clumps. The third vial was still clear yellow water. Now I asked him, "Why?" He said, "The first 2 vials contain hard water." I said, "But the second one has water in it from our Multi Pure filter." He said, "Your Multi Pure filter does filter out microscopic water bugs, however, it does not filter out hard water!" Well, we could see it in the window with our own eyes and we had tasted the difference between soap-scum filled cups and clean cups filled with soft water. Plus our real soap lathered with Rainsoft water. My husband signed a contract for about $5700 and the next morning a young man arrived with new copper pipes, our new Rainsoft tanks, equipment for RO water at our kitchen sink, and plastic tubing to lead the bead cleaning water across the basement to our laundry soak sink so the salt used to clean the beads goes down the drain to the sewer. That's one of the differences between Rainsoft and other companies. Rainsoft uses the salt to clean the beads that filter the water, however, the salt NEVER enters the home's water system. It is directed straight to the drain. Our system has been programmed to clean the beads at 1:30A everyday because no one is using water at that time of the morning. In the summertime our entire backyard is transformed into an organic garden. I water my garden with Rainsoft water, too. Every water faucet in and out of our home emits Rainsoft water. How marvelous!!!
We thoroughly enjoyed the boxes of products they provided us with. Now we use our own choice. Actually, we use 1/4 of the detergent recommended for each load of laundry. Any more than that requires a second rinsing.
No fabric sheets or softener are ever needed. Everything comes out of the dryer plump and fluffy and soft because of the soft water.
Now, if there is grease on the stove, I can wipe it off with a damp piece of paper towel. No soap is even required. That's how great our water is!
I can clean anything in our home, walls, sinks, etc. with our bar of plain soap.
I'm a Chaz Dean Wen girl. I use just 3 pumps of cleansing conditioner to clean my short hair.
We just had a new tub/shower enclosure and fixtures installed. The new large and very large rainforest shower heads combined with our Rainsoft water make showering feel like a little bit of heaven.
We've never had to have anything repaired in 13 years of use.
Even now, after 13 years, I still occasionally thank my husband for the Rainsoft water and tell him it's the best investment we've ever made. I cannot say enough nice things about the Rainsoft water equipment and the people we dealt with. As far as we are concerned, Rainsoft is the best water conditioner company on the market. Stay away from water softener companies.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace