It would be helpful to know the full analysis of your water before making recommendations. Hardness, pH, iron, tds, sulfur, sulfates, sediment, etc. Assuming manganese/iron is your only problem, there are several options, including oxidation/filtration, greensand and pyrolox. Of those, I prefer pyrolox because it will allow you to treat your water without handling any chemicals and is relatively small and easy to install, no more difficult than a common softener. You can google pyrolox and find a lot of good information about how it works. Cost is between $500 and $1000 depending upon the size of unit you need. A softener, while it can remove manganese, is generally not designed to do so and will experience a shortened life-span if used for that purpose. Chemical oxidation followed by filtration is generally much more expensive to install, with extra equipment to maintain, and requires the homeowner to handle chemicals. You may still want to have a softener installed, if your water is hard. A softener would be installed after the manganese removal system.

How does your aerator work? What kind of equipment is it? Please desribe your equipment, size, pump type, injector?, retention size, equipment sequence...etc. It is not clear by what you say: "The results showed that I likely do not need a water softner." How was that concluded? I was wondering how much flux would it take to prevent water from entering the aerator? Sounds a little strange to me. Maybe it prevented air from entering the water. If your aerator is creating ferric, or precipitated iron, then a softener after it will have no (or little) positive effect. In fact, it will probably damage the resins and perhaps the valve over time. The iron will come through and cause staining and other problems. You need an efficient backwashing (mulitmedia) filter. Andy

skyclad- Let me again point out that a Pressure Reduction Valve (PRV) should not be buried and the city telling you that lines would have to be dug up sounds entirely bogus. PRV's do not last forever because they have an internal diaphragm that needs to be refurbished periodically (typically every 10 years or so). There is also an adjustment screw that you have to set to get the correct pressure, and sometimes you need to reset it if the supply pressure changes significantly. I'm not saying it's impossible that someone buried it -- in the concrete or behind some sheetrock -- but only an imbecile would do so. You may have a PRV somewhere and just be unaware of it. Or there might not be one, and you will need to have one installed. Finally, when the employee told you 130 PSI was "normal," all that means is that could be the normal supply pressure, not that it would be ok to have that pressure inside the house. Regardless of whether it's 150, or 130 or even 100 psi, as Jake said, you've got to get it adjusted down to no more than 80 psi.

Since this is just specific faucets, the problem is what Kudzu said. There is sediment that was stirred up when the heater was replaced and it has clogged the aerators. A good plumber will anticipate this problem and run the hot water out through a tub faucet or washing machine hose until that's flushed out. Then they will run the other faucets and clean out any crud that makes it to the aerators rather than walking away and leaving it to the home owner. The problem isn't "burping the water heater" (an explanation since retracted by Stax). That explanation was absurd. Sure there can be air in the top of the water heater and that will collect at the top and will exit through the hot water line as spitting and sputtering. Significant sputtering is a good thing to avoid, if you can, because it can cause grit to come loose and clog the aerators. Air will work its way out very quickly though - so "air" isn't the issue - crud in the faucets is the issue.