Regional Talk > Chicago > Sycamore Illinois and Water Hardness

Sycamore Illinois and Water Hardness

Wouldn't the capacity be determined by how much water you use?
I don't know, I know nothing about them but that would seem logical to me.

You could try »Home Improvement too.

That's part of it. There's also a softening capacity. For example if you look on Home Depot's site you'll 18,000 grain, 30,000 grain and 40,000 grain.

reply to jmdomini
Buy the biggest one with "demand regeneration" that you can afford.

When you get in the house, have a sample of the water tested. Sears will do it for free, probably most other places that sell softeners will as well. Let run for a while before you collect the sample so you don't get what's been standing in the plumbing.

Then set your softener for 1 or 2 grains higher than the water tests.

The softener "knows" it's capacity, and keeps track of water usage. It multiplies grains per gallon (that you set) times number of gallons used (which it measures) and regenerates at the time you set (like 1 AM) BEFORE it hits it's capacity.

Buying the bigger one simply means you'll have more days between regeneration cycles.

P.S. I've had Sears softeners for years, but when I needed o-rings for the bypass valve Sears didn't stock them any more! They recommended generic ones which they were happy to sell me. But the darn valve leaked anyway. Ended up replacing the Sears softener with a Morton I got on sale at Menards.

HTH,
Stevert

reply to jmdomini
I live in Sycamore....and I'm also a Realtor here. That's a nice part of town and I'm sure you will love it out here....congrats.

I actually grew up in Genoa and moved out to the Fox Valley for about 10 years before buying a home in Sycamore in 2002. I fought my wife a lot...I didn't want to move back out this way. Our plan at the time was 2-3 years in Sycamore and then back to the tri-cities. Well, 7 years later and I don't think I'm ever leaving, I don't want to! This town has done so much with the downtown area in the last 10 years and it's just wonderful.

As to the water hardness, it's hard. ha, just the answer you wanted, right? I'm not sure what water softner place you called, but I would suggest calling soft water city in town here. They'll show up on the google map with a soft water city sycamore search. They pretty much own the market in this area.

Myself, I don't know how those things work and I'm a cheap ass on top of it. When I used a water softner, it sucked a lot of salt because it was set wrong..then one day it overflowed about 3 years ago, I bypassed it and haven't used it since. I grew up with hard water, so I was already used to it.

I have one client on the northwest side of town that does her own salt. She has a horrible back problem and can't lift the bags, so everytime she needs more salt, she calls me. I don't mind helping her since she's a great lady. Anyway, I'm probably adding 2-3 50 lb bags into her softner about every other month.

I don't even know what the capacity is of these systems, but if I had to venture a guess, the tub is about 25-35 gallons in size?

I hope that helps. And Congrats Again, Welcome To Town!

reply to Stevert

reply to Hesher
Hesher, thanks for the welcome and the recommendation. I can't wait to get away from Aurora and out to the country! The home inspection is scheduled for tomorrow, hopefully no major problems found and I can move forward. The place looks to be in mint condition, however it's been vacant for almost a year so it needs a good checkout.

Any way, that's the second recommendation I've received for Soft Water City. Guess I should give them a chance.

I've also been told by several people to forget about going with the "big box" softner and stick with Flek/Pentair Water and the like.