"Why would you soften ALL the water in the system, when only the heated water is usually the problem?" A common question and often asked... Back in the day when homes were rarely, if ever, plumbed for a softener retrofits were installed at the water heater because it was easy, quick, and cheaper than interrupting the water service. When door-to-door water treatment hucksters prowled the neighborhoods an easy install was an effective close. When new homes began to include softener loops some had the kitchen and hose bibs plumbed pre-loop so soft water wasn't servicing the kitchen sink and outside. As time went by it seems that excluding the kitchen and hose bibs from water treatment was lost in the shuffle and new construction provided a softener loop for the entire house, if they provided a loop at all. Softener retrofits continued to be whole house, except for those old-timers who learned one way and that's all they knew and in cases where it would be very expensive or not easily done other than to soften only the water heater. People also discovered that washing their cars with soft water was a good thing... just like the car washes have been doing for decades and decades and decades. If the water entering the home is hard and you only treat the water heater then everywhere there is cold water the water is hard. Every faucet, appliance, pipe, and fixture. Everywhere in the house the hot and cold mix the water will be less hard, but not soft. You won't get the advantage of soft water. With today's efficient water softeners it really isn't much more costly to treat the entire house than exclude the kitchen and hose bibs if you factor in the accelerated wear and tear and more frequent repairs to faucets, appliances, pipes, and fixtures that hard hard water will bring not to mention the savings from using less soaps and detergents. Why would anyone want to pay for soft water and then not get it?

1. If you have high Total Dissolved Solids and sediment, then you should be filtering AHEAD of the water softener. The cleaner the water coming into the softener, the less trouble you'll have with nuisance failures like plugged injectors. 2. If your water is really crappy, eg. you can see the dissolved solids, you really should look at a backwashing filter. The benefits are no real reduction in pressure and gpm flow and because the filter (about the size of a softener) automatically backwashers, there are no cartidges to replace, which you will be doing often. 3. You make reference to a $500 fleck. Do you know if it has enough capacity based on hardness vs usage vs # of people in the house? Is it demand based or timer based regeneration? If buying direct are you prepared to ship the thing to the mfg and duke it out with them if it fails? A good rule of thumb when dealing with installed anything to do with your house is take the cost of the goods and double it at minimum. The company installing has to make a profit, deal with warranty, cover overhead......The company in the link I included deals with softeners, filters, everything and the pricing will give you an idea of what decent equipment on it's own is worth. But it's worth nothing to you if it's not installed competently. 4. At 2k installed for a decent softener with warranty through the installer -- it's their baby if something goes wrong, you're not getting robbed. Can you shop it around with smaller independent plumbing contractors? Sure but make sure you can get references and feel comfortable doing business with whomever you choose, that may be worth a few hundred. 5. If you are going to go through the trouble of filtering and softening your well water, you will be a couple of hundred dollars away from not having to rely on bottled water. I mentioned Reverse Osmosis for drinking, it is cheaper in the long run vs paying for bottled and it tastes neutral. Note that the only contaminant that RO can't deal with is hydrogen sulphide (you know it if you have it, your water smells like rotten eggs). Removing hydrogen sulphide is another 2k or so. 6. Before taking the plunge with anyone, you may want to have your water tested thoroughly by an independent lab to see what contaminants are present and see what they recommend for treatment based on your intended usage. Their services aren't free. The cost here for a thorough analysis is about $80. Iron, Hardness, Sediment, TDS is a good starting point if you're not drinking it. 7. Research as much as you can, google google and more google. We moved to the country back in april and had to deal with all of this, minus sediment in the water (I'm lucky, my well starts at 130' and goes down another 30' in fractured bedrock). Being uninformed about rotten egg smell, we almost pulled the trigger on 2k worth of oxidizing and filtering equipment. Turns out that 2/3 of a gallon of chlorox killed the harmless bacteria that was the cause of the smell. -But- The water conditioning pros won't tell you that because they want to sell equipment. Hope my late night rambling helps. Here is a link that might be useful: backwashing filter

I love my RO filter. Most of my out of town relatives who've come to visit have commented on how they like my water, not knowing it was filtered. One small additional benefit with a softener + RO combination is that the RO membrane will last a bit longer than if you feed it "regular" water. My RO is plumbed to the fridge so it can feed the icemaker + water dispenser, and I have a separate spigot at my prep sink. It sounds like you're already doing it, but you'll want to be sure that you run RO water through plastic tubing, not directly in copper pipes. The plastic tubing is normally run inside the copper pipe. Be aware that the RO filter removes fluoride, so if you have kids you might want to talk to your dentist about it. A fluoride toothpaste and fresh fruit should be plenty of fluoride, but talk to your dentist.

Your softener started out with a capacity of 48,000 grains when the resin was new. In order to maintain that capacity you would have to regenerate your softener with an obscene amount of salt. As a lower salt dosage is used to regen, softener capacity decreases, salt efficiency increase and water efficiency decreases. There is a sweet spot where we get a good balance of salt and water efficiency at about 6 lb salt per cubic ft of resin. However, you have iron and manganese in your water. They are more difficult to strip off of resin than hardness ions (calcium/magnesium) so you need to use at least 8 lb salt per cu ft of resin. Since your capacity was set too high - yes, your settings have caused the hardness bleed from your softener. Good rule of thumb: If you don't understand what the programming means, don't change it without verification from someone who does. Your resin likely has some fouling. Fortunately, the SST-60 will be easier to clean than a standard resin if it is fouled. If you regen with 8 lb salt per cu ft, once sodium and hardness capacity corrections are made, you have a capacity of 23,275 grains. Your hardness needs to be set at 53 (39 calcium/magnesium hardness PLUS iron/manganese compensated hardness). BF (brine fill time) of 14 means you are regenerating with 14 lb salt/ cu ft of resin, which is high. Leave it there for now, until you've run a couple of regens with the correct capacity setting. You may need to go through a resin cleaning procedure to get your softener back to correct operation.