What is the BEST WATER SOFTENER for YOUR FAMILY?

Salt or No Salt? Your first consideration is whether you want to consider a traditional salt based water softener or one of the salt free water softener alternatives. I have never seen proof that the salt free units actually work to soften your water and if you carefully read their literature you’ll notice that they never actually say they soften water they say they “eliminate scale” or are a “water softener alternative” but be sure you understand that your water will test as being hard before and after this type of so called water softening equipment.

So a salt water softener is the only practical way to get soft water. Where should you buy? A big box store offers great pricing and convenience but just try to get service after the sale! Sure, you can always return it for a credit but disconnecting and returning a water softener, after it’s been installed, is difficult and expensive. These big box store water softeners are very inefficient and since they’re all made in China or Korea, product quality is always a concern, especially the electronics. Getting parts or even a parts list is almost impossible and their life span is only about 5 years, if you’re lucky. You could buy a water softener from a proprietary national brand dealer but you’ll soon discover that they’re very expensive and if you require service or parts, once again, be prepared to “pay up” because “you can only get the parts from us” so they can charge pretty much whatever they want. Also, since they represent only one brand they’ll recommend just that brand even though something else might be a better fit for your family.

You could purchase from a plumber who works out of his truck, but often these guys know very little about the product itself and keep installing the same old inefficient product because that’s all they know. If the equipment needs programming, they’ll toss you a manual and ask you to read it and program it yourself. My suggestion, when investing in a water softener or any other piece of water filtration equipment is to buy from a dedicated independent water treatment professional. Water Treatment Professionals like myself, when certified by the Water Quality association, learn the products inside & out and because we work with water softeners every day and we see what works and what doesn’t, we know what will work best for your family. Most important, is that we are an independent dealer so if we come across a product line that is problematic, we drop it and go to another one that gives better performance. We want our customers to be satisfied and rely on great word of mouth advertising and reviews to grow our businesses in our local communities.

When working with a dealer who has been established for well over 10 years you can also get some great recommendations about product life expectancies too. For example with our High Efficiency Aquamaster water softeners,  I have seen these last over 20 years! High Efficiency or Standard efficiency is the next consideration. There are very few actual High Efficiency water softeners like the Aquamaster product line on the market. These will save your family considerable money and effort as they use less than ½ the salt and 1/3 of the water compared to a standard efficiency water softener. Wouldn’t you prefer to only handle half as many 44 lb bags of salt over the next 20 years?

A Clack valved water softener is another great choice, especially if you’re dealing with hardness AND iron in your well water.

These two water softeners represent 2 great choices for your family, all of them will give you 15 + years of reliable service but which one is the best? Well, it depends. If you’re on a municipal water supply or well water that has had the iron removed from an iron/sulphur filter and you want to save money with a high efficiency water softener this Aquamster is the best choice for your family. If you are planning to use the water softener to remove iron from your well water in addition to softening the water this Clack valved water softener is a better choice. It’s not a high efficiency so you will use more than double the salt and water during regeneration compared to the Aquamaster High Efficiency Water Softener.