Find Out What All Of Those Water Softener Review Sites Are Not Telling You

The Internet is a great place to find reviews on just about everything

. But as you move up the ladder of expense and complexity of a product it becomes more difficult to determine how accurate or complete the reviews are. In the case of water softeners you can find a lot of reviews that may be accurate, but not always complete.

A review will likely tell you features and benefits of a particular softener, but not get into installation details. For example, they won't describe how to set up a bypass in your plumbing system or how to drain waste water. These are things you typically learn after you get the unit home and have to figure out how to install it.

Since I did the installation myself I had to cut into my existing plumbing system. It was all copper so I become somewhat adept at sweating copper. Well, good enough to not cause any leaks anyway. I installed new shutoff valves to turn off water to the softener if I ever need to remove or repair it (which I never did, thankfully) but I did not put in a bypass. I realized later that a bypass is useful if want to completely isolate the water softener, and even remove it, while still maintaining water flow to the rest of the house. I never needed to do that, but it bugged me all the time because I knew I didn't have it if I ever did need it. Ah, and about those valves, it's best to use ball valves over gate valves. Yes, they're more expensive, but they are very reliable and have a short throw (90 degrees) which makes them easy to use.

One thing you will see mentioned is whether or not the unit is programmable. This is useful to control your regeneration cycles as it will track the amount of soft water your household uses. Instead of wasting water during a regen cycle that's not needed it will only regen when necessary.

While you're working on your plumbing system you want to be sure to isolate the water that goes into your house from the water that feeds your sprinkler system. There's no point in wasting money spraying softened water onto your lawn or garden. This type of water is not good for growing things anyway.

In my case, it was pretty obvious our home needed a water softener since we were on a community well, all the neighbors had water softeners, and we were starting to see some mineral buildup in the pipes. It was a fairly new home when we moved in, but for some reason the original owners/builder did not add a water softener. Also, every local supermarket, grocery store and hardware store carried ample supplies of the salts used to refill water softeners, so that was a pretty good hint that they were used by many people in the community.

If it's not so obvious in your case you can have your water tested to determine the mineral content - most of the water softener reviews will mention this and even recommend testing facilities near your area. You may even be able to just bring it to your local hardware or home store to have them test it for you.

Water Softener Review Video

by: Vicki Katzman

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