Can a Water Softener work with our well water?

you should find out what the TDS is composed of because it can include many kind of nasty pollutant metals and anions too.
Reverse Osmosis is a way to treat the drinking side of yor water for TDS removal. Total removal is to deionize it and that leaves you with water that tastes really flat.
When you had your TDS and pH and hardness, did you not get any other results?

Dont just go ot and buy some unit that may not do anything .Kinetico is a good tool bt you need something before their treat system. and a "tampon " or Activated charcoal will notgive you complete removal (maybe only about 20% tops for a AC unit and 10% for a paper filter (it only removes the big chunks >0.1 microns of TDS that is actually sub- particulate).

Also, the order by which you have your treatment installed is important. Its really a chemistry problem and not all these water tretment"Specialists" are trained well enough to understand that. We have some guys on the boards here but I dint know about any of their cpabilities bt there are also 3 or 4 chemists (or recovering chemists) who can see whether the water treatment giys arent blowing smoke at you.



PS, did you have a specific conductance test run" pH? alkalinity? carbonate? Nitrate? Nitrite? Total K Nitrogen? How abot alkalis like sodium, potassium or alkali earths like calcium or magnesium? trace metals?
These values would be important to design a system thats not an off the shelf tank of rocks.

Carmen, the Kinetico 2175 can handle up to 175 grains of hardness (thus the name). The high TDS is a direct correlation to the hardness level. This system will do a good job for you; however, keep in mind that at that high a hardness level the system will go through a lot of salt. Also, don't expect your water to be "perfect". You will probably still notice some spotting on dishes, glasses and fixtures; this is actually a soft water spotting that should wipe away fairly easily. I don't agree with Farmerman's recommendation; a reverse osmosis system will not handle this water easily. It would require pretreatment (a softener) and would have to be fairly large to handle typical household water requirements. If money was no object and you don't mind the maintenance, I'd go with the Kinetico softener followed by one of their commercial reverse osmosis systems. Good luck!

I disagree. The components of TDS are often way beyond a simple measurement of Carbonate or Ferric/ferrous hardness. They may be the result of toxic cations especially at 2700 ppm!!!. You would (the homeowner) be accepting bad advice to just go ahead with a simple system.
As I said befoire its a chemistry problem and until you know the components of the water were all just guessing. I dont like gessing about whats in my water but many water treatment companies really dont care about your health, they care about your monthly service fee.

In several countries weve used dual water systems where the system is bifurcated for the potable component being treated to a higher (and safe) level.
Anyway, if the TDS were a simple hardness that was more than carbonate, it could be iron and manganese and the EPA guidance for manganese is less than 6PPM (manganese is a toxicant that can be associated with neural lesions. Im no water chemist(I was a REE chemist) but I dont accept some water treatment company telling the homeowner that some off the shelf unit will treat an unknown dissolved load that reslts in a TDS of 2700ppm withot knowing the components. That is just total BS. Some constituents (like lead can dissolve and stay dissolved in low pH water and shoot right through). As and Pb are sometimes naturally occuring components of certain aquifers (especially shallow aquifers of the West coast areas and New England glaciated terranes.
Reverse osmosis will need a pre conditioning and pH adjustment bt will take care of most of the TDS before it gets to your kinetico.

My opinion is that the second water treatment lab was being accurate, its a potentially difficult treatment of 2700ppm TDS. You should contact a" professional /commercial treatment company" that isnt just trying to sell you a system without more lab information.
Remember , its not a matter of cost, its a matter of what your health is worth to you. Water borne toxicants are a silent health problem all over the US where ground water is in use.

PS, Im assuming that youre in Arizona. Several of the intermontane basin aquifers in Az are loaded with pooky stuff like sulfate salts and selenim salts.

The Second culligan guy is probably correct. But, the hardness is unreal, are you confident the testing is accurate?