Yur choices are either have your membrane try to remove calcium carbonate or sodium. Calcium is know as a hydrophobic element and sodium is a hydrophillic element. What this means the water loves sodium and hate calcium. Membranes will rid the deposits of sodium very easily and calcium will adhere and soon the membrane is shot. Inn fact we get the word calcification from this process. The prefilter will suffer but not as much. Certainly, if you remove the calcium and iron, the whole system will benefit. Membranes will start to be damaged in as little as 5 gpg in a relatively short time. Are you connecting the RO to the ice maker? Good idea if you can. Andy Christensen, CWS

If a ball valve has a problem it's usually at install. Either a defective ball valve or more likely the installer applied too much heat or took too long when soldering it in. The reason I recommend a three ball bypass along with the OEM bypass is that most dealers want to install just the OEM bypass and the redundancy of the additional three ball bypass, at it's modest cost during installation, is a good idea. With no Kinetico bypass what you have will serve you once the ball valves that leak are taken care of. Understand before you speak with the dealer that the water at the float valve is under system water pressure and all that is between correct operation and failure is the float. The tank drain elbow is provided so that if the float fails the overflow will be directed to a drain cause if it fails when no one is around it will be pumping water into the brine tank at house pressure. If there is no floor drain handy then it is common to drill a hole through an exterior wall and run a PE tube from the brine tank elbow through the wall to the outside. The elbow is a gravity drain and will not run water up. Many softeners are installed disregarding the brine tank drain and as long as the float never fails or leaks it's OK. I've seen quite a few where the float failed and there is substantial water damage. Do not let the dealer minimize the importance of the brine tank drain or say it can be ignored because you're betting a lot on that float mechanism... an awful lot. If something does happen and there is no line to drain there's a chance your homeowner's insurance won't cover the damage. With a washing machine I'd think that one of the Gap-It airgaps from airgap.com will do nicely. Pick the one that accommodates both the washer drain hose and the softener drain hose.

Yes, we use AC here from April through September. This year we even used it some in October. We will need to replace our electric heating system, also. The one we have now is resistance heat and we would go to a heat pump. There is no gas line to my house. Well that stinks. I would call the gas company to see if they have any plans to bring it to your area. At my last house we had electric heat which was a big turn off, we immediately changed it in the spring adding central air. We just replaced our gas furnace 2 weeks ago. The whole job was around $5,000. We called a few places, it was ranging up to $7,000. Be sure to look in the phone book to see if there are any coupons, also call the electric company to see what they offer. We priced cultured marble counters yesterday at Home Depot just to get an idea of price. For the master it would be about $300.00 plus the faucets. For Silestone, which we have in the kitchen, it would be about $600 to $700 plus the cost of two undermount sinks and two faucets. It might be worth it to get Silestone since it certainly is a more WOW look. Even in lower priced homes people like nice kitchens and baths. What do you think? We just did custom counters in the bath & kitchen, the price you got sounds good. Pretty sure it cost us about $3,000 total, we didn't get anything fancy.

Thank you everyone, yes I seem to like the blue one too than the orange one. I guess first hunches are the right ones. Anyway, the blue one is back, until I decide what to do. Thanks @aktillary9....yes, love the placement of your top rug, it does complement the lower one and also makes the room look a nice size with the furniture just touching the edges. Cooks