jani - Grohe was the first. Hans - the brother/cousin/son - had a falling out and left to start his own firm. This was a loooong time ago. Hansgrohe has a larger offering and cultivates relationships with world renound designers to style some of their products. They were acquired by the global building products giant Masco about 10 years ago and have retained independence from big brother at least on the surface. Delta is also a Masco brand which is why there is a lot of similarity in showerheads. Re: price. It's not cut a dried enough to say one is more expensive than the other. You just have to look at the indiv. products YOU are considering. Same with quality. Both are good. Service: Hansgrohe has a larger U.S. presence and can also leverage their parent's resources so in my opinion their service is better.

I question a Bryant dealer who does not install an Evolution thermostat with Evolution equipment. Did he at least offer it as an option? The Evolution thermostat has a cool to dehumidify feature. It will continue to run AC until the humidity level you have set has been met. It may go as much as 3 degrees below the temperature set point to achieve the humidity level. The thermostat may also slow down the blower speed when it is in the cool to dehumidify mode. Since the the AC is single stage the variation in blower speed is not large but it helps. The thermostat also should do a better job of controlling the furnace. It will also report many diagnostics features which the Honeywell 6000 cannot.

I think watering would be quite handy for going on trips. With some of our collections though, you would need quite the setup! Wish cost would come down, that would help adoption significantly. I have several wireless plant sensors set up in my plants and connected to my server. For all but one, I can check moisture / sunlight / fertilizer / temperature with nearly live data. The last sensor is a bit far away so I have to sync manually. To me, the big strength is logging and tending data, as well as quantification with correct / useful metrics. Overall, the big picture is most important. Initially, I was hung up on live and instant data. Which honestly isn't that helpful if you don't really understand how to apply that knowledge to specific plants. Obviously plants don't respond instantly either. You can keep a plant alive with automatic recommendations from software and devices, but to have them flourish you still need to master caring for them. Here is some of my data for my rooftop plants in the order of moisture level, light PAR DLI, and temperature:

Ok, So a few things that I see: the hardness level is between 5-12 grains per gallon. At the top end of that it's considered "Very Hard" but I see a lot of water harder than that. It seems very treatable. There appears to be no iron. They are using Chlorimine to disinfect your water. If you decide that you want to remove that, it requires a specialized type of carbon filter (catalytic carbon). You don't need to remove it... but some people like to use a carbon filter to remove chlorine and improve the taste / smell / and some chemicals for drinking water - in your case you would need the carbon filter to remove chlorimine - not chlorine So back to your original question: "Which brand?" Water softening is a specific thing: Exchanging hardness ions for sodium ions. No special sauce or anything like that. It's a common and commodity process. Because it's become a commodity, companies are trying to add more to it to differentiate themselves. And, because you are mostly talking about stuff that you can't see or otherwise know it exists (without testing) they sell a lot unnecessary "water treatment" that goes beyond water softening and includes whole house carbon filtering and reverse osmosis filters. But you sound like you just want a water softener. -Look for a water softener that uses either a Fleck (such as the 5600SXT) or a Clack (WS1) digital control valve. These brands of control valves are industry standard and are really the meat of the softener. These will recharge based on usage water. Clack valves are not sold over the internet - so they are less common. -Also, I would look for a softener that uses 10% crosslinked resin - which is more resistant to breaking down from the disinfectant in municipal water. - You want it to be sized properly for your family. -Don't consider anything that does anything other than soften the water. It shouldn't have carbon in the resin tank, for example. You don't want mixed media resin beds. If you want a carbon filter - buy one... don't try to do both in the same unit. - A good water softener is going to be $600 (Amazon) - $1000. It's not going to be $3,000. - There is no such thing as a "Salt-free" softener. If anyone tries to sell you one you need to run. If you get proposals you can post them and we would be happy to look at them with you.