On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:36:16 -0400, "Steve Young"
bowtieATbrightdslDOTnet wrote:

Reverse osmosis will remove the minerals, but it isn't practical for whole
house use. Many do it for drinking water only. Personally, I drink hard
water and send the house water through a softener. We have a separate cold
hard water spout at the kitchen sink. There is evidence that drinking hard
well water reduces heart attacks. Speculation is that it's the magnesium in
hard water. Along with calcium, magnesium also gets replaced with sodium or
potassium for soft water. If I had to choose which of the 2 soft waters I
had to drink, it would be potassium.


Yes, the testing company recommended a softener for the house, and an
RO under the kitchen sink for drinking water. I believe the price
for installation of both systems was quoted to be around $2300.

I believe the RO price was somewhere around $800 for a 50 gpd system ,
and then had to deal with expense of the filters. After thinking
hard about it, decided that paying $33 cents a gallon for the RO
Culligan water at Walmart made more sense, and even with a softener,
will continue to do this for my drinking water.

As for the softener, I've been delaying installation, because of the
way my outside lines are laid out. I used to have public water and
the outside lines to my pastures and barn was teed off where the
public line came. Unfortunately, I had to dig the well on the other
side of the house, resulting in the animal and garden water sources
now going first into the house.

I am/was concerned about my cattle/pigs and small animals
(rabbits/chickens/ducks) drinking the sodium boosted water, so I've
held off for about a year trying to come up with another solution
other than redigging all of the outside lines. But my water is so
hard (36) that I fear for my appliances and hot water heaters,
clothes don't seem to come as clean, and I'm tired of eating off of
plates and glasses that look like they've been dipped in chalk, or
rather my wife is tired of having guests do so.