As I mentioned in my other post, you are asking for something that isn't possible. You could potentially use a R/O unit - but that would waste a ton more water than a water softener and would be hugely expensive.

You need to know what your iron levels are as well.

The real answer is for the water supplier to clean up the water in the first place. That's not likely to happen, so I would install a softener on the sly. The water is too hard and too brown to be told you can't treat it.

Oliviag/ bring back Sophie

Please provide a link to one of these filters. All I'm seeing is point of use filters for countries that don't have biologically clean water.

Oliviag/ bring back Sophie

Oh dear...

No, you are mistaken. There are not residential units that will soften water that don't use salt (potassium chloride or sodium chloride). I asked you to link to one and you didn't. I already know they don't exist. I've been fairly in-depth on this particular topic for years... here's [a classic discussion from 2008.[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/yes-or-no-to-easywater-water-softener-by-freije-dsvw-vd~2504869?n=182) Note that Alice In Wonderland is an ace water chemist - (S)he no longer posts here.

The term "water softener" is by definition an ion exchange unit that exchanges sodium ions for the hardness ions.

The term "Water conditioner" is a snake oil term used because the sellers of snake oil can't legally use the term "water softener". When you see "water conditioner" used - you should run away. Most "water conditioners" are really just carbon filters. If you use a hardness test - such as a Hach test kit -- it will still show that the water coming out of a "water conditioner" is hard.

Then there are the magnetic units that are utter BS. There is some support for magnetic units controlling scaling in specific industrial settings -- but that's not softening and it's not in residential use. The rest is total snake oil.

There are R/O filters. There are usually point of use units that produce small amounts of very pure water - but they require a lot of water to do that. There are whole house RO units, but they are big, expensive and waste huge amounts of water.

Yes, a few of the contaminates the OP is dealing with could be removed by a micron filter. That would last for about 10 gallons before the filter would be completely clogged and need to be cleaned or disposed of.

The iron may or may not (depending on the amount) require a separate iron filter. It will be a backwashing filter.

The hardness level is very high - and the only practical solution to remove it is an ion exchange water softener - and that will use salt, and it will backwash.

The tannins may require a separate tannin filter - which would also be a backwashing filter.

Oliviag/ bring back Sophie

When there is a water quality problem, the very first step is to identify exactly what it is that needs to be removed and how much of it is present. Then you use the appropriate filters to accomplish that. You don't do it the other way - go look for filters and hope that it addresses the water problem. You have been taking random guesses at wildly inappropriate filtering suggestions.

In this case the OP (Diane - not a guy) has said they have:

Iron: We don't know what type or how much other than "high"
Hardness: 40 grains per gallon - which is extremely hard
Tannins: Apparently high

These are specific problems - with known and specific filtering solutions. For example, a filter that can remove taste and odor, will not remove hardness. A filter that removes sediment will not remove tannis. High levels of Iron can clog everything up and needs to be cleaned up first.

We know exactly what the chemistry is and how to successfully treat these problems - without any guessing or magic or fairy dust. It's been done in millions of applications for decades.

All of these problems require a backwashing filter. It should make sense that if you have a lot of something that you are removing from the water with a filter - you have to actually get rid of it. If you are vacuuming a dirty house, you have to eventually empty the vacuum canister -- it's the same idea.

There wasn't any device in the link that you provided that addressed any of the OP's concerns. Not one of the devices removed hardness. None removed iron, none removed tannins. To the extent that some of them contained a carbon filter, they could - in some application - reduce chlorine and tastes / odors. That's it. Most of the claims ranged from completely unprovable to outright fraudulent. Here's a tip: 99% of "scale inhibiting" devices in the residential market are bogus - particularly things with magnetic windings around a pipe and anything that mentions "salt free softening". It was telling that one of the filters on the list that offered "salt free softening" had a performance data sheet - it would remove chlorine - which is what any carbon filter will do.

BTW: What you were looking at was not a legitimate review - you understand that don't you? This isn't someone who has tested any of these systems or even has any knowledge of water chemistry or water treatment. This was a "paid reviewer". The entire site is bogus and is constructed simply to earn credit for linking to Amazon.

I have already told the OP what I would do - she posted this elsewhere.