Wow, glad you got to the bottom of it and solved your issues!

We have a whole house filter as well (city water; lots of lime), and love it! Fixtures and plumbing stay SO much cleaner!

Glad you're enjoying your new water!

We have well water for the first time, too and after a lifetime of wonderful Lake Michigan water this has been an adjustment. We had to have our well water tested within 48 hours of our move in to get our occupancy permit (results weren't available for 3 weeks so we could have been poisoned!) and everything tested well within limits and just a bit high on Magnesium. Mostly I love our water, clothes get clean, dishes don't spot, no build up on faucets and skin/hair feel clean but not dried out. But within weeks of our move in 2+ years ago the glaze on our toilets had etched at the water line - not a build up, the glaze actually etched so there is no fix except replacement. We've had a whole house filter since day one and it catches particulate very well. There are different materials for the filters and some are better than others - I don't recommend the polyester ones but it may depend on your specific water.

Growing up we had softened water for a while but none of us liked the taste so it was not a permanent addition. It also was hard to get soap rinsed off when washing hands or showering and getting that slimy feeling off was impossible. Do you find that your water tastes odd now with the softener?

When we moved here there was a salt system already in place, but the owners before us (we are the 5th owners of this house) told us “oh, we never used that, we didn’t think the water tasted bad.” Ugh!!! (City water in the Midwest) First of all, it tasted like crap, some of the worst water I’ve ever tasted, and I grew up in the Deep South. Second of all, we had to end up replacing basically all of the fixtures in the house...too many years of corrosion. But for us, the salt system still didn’t get everything. We still had this weird sediment in our toilet tanks for instance. We got a whole house water filtration system a couple of years ago and FINALLY those two things in combination make a HUGE difference! (If we run out of salt we can taste a difference... so the salt still helps) But yes... my skin and hair is so much better! No more weirdo sediment in the toilets. My fixtures stay in better shape. I can drink water straight out of the tap! Best thing we ever did.

DLM2000....So what caused the etching in your toilets even with your filter/softener in place?? Do you have a softener?

Honestly, I don’t drink straight water :) We have a seltzer dispenser on our pantry fridge and that tastes great. But maybe the carbonation affects the taste in a positive way. I don’t know. Cooking with it seems no different, but I never cared for the taste of our unfiltered well water for drinking nor have I liked any city tap water I’ve tried. Most city water tastes awful and has way too much chlorine for it to be palatable.

From what I understand you can adjust how much softening there is and it really seems perfect at this point. Showering and soap rinsing feels silky (not slimy to me) and seems to rinse thoroughly. I am totally loving it. My skin and hair feel so much healthier and I feel like I can rest easy because I’m not destroying my brand new plumbing with all the mineral buildup.

Ladma.....yes I have read that as well. And actually that “squeaky clean” feeling is a negative rather than a positive because it’s really clogging pores and leaving residue as opposed to leaving your skin genuinely clean.

This is interesting as I'm dealing with aquifer-sourced water that is causing all those build-up issues, and I'm also on septic. How do you handle the recharging outflow of water? Does it drain into your septic system? That's been one concern of ours.

we have the softener drain into a separate dry well. the town used to allow it in the septic, but no longer. your local board of health will have an opinion for you. we've had this system for 25 years, I get a little bit of mineral deposit in my toilets that a pumice Stone erases.

Does not drain into our septic tank (although I’ve read that it’s actually beneficial to do so). At this point, it just drains out the side of the house and we will actually be tying it into one of our underground drainage pipes.

Yep, I am on City water - and I bought a nice water softener off of Amazon ($600 for Fleck based unit). It really is amazing. The fixtures including the sinks, showers and toilets stay so much cleaner. It was definitely worth the $600

Just a few tips about all this:

1. "salt based softener" is redundant. There is no softener that isn't salt based. They are the only things that will remove hardness from the water. Anything that uses magnets, electro-magnets, etc is bogus.

2. You must test your water and know what's in it. If you are on a well, that includes testing to be sure it's biologically safe as well as for chemicals (Nitrates, etc). You obviously need to know about hardness and iron also. The softener will remove hardness but has to be sized and calibrated to the hardness level.

3. You don't need a $3000 unit. If you are just removing hardness, a $600 Fleck based softener will work great.

Jake: There are conditioners that don't use salt. The tanks contain beads, as does a normal softener, but instead of backwashing periodically with brine, the filter medium in the tanks get replaced every few years (up to 5, depending, I guess, on how hard the water is). This Old House used them on a recent show. So, there are real systems that don't use added salt.

We are on well water for the first time as well. Our water is not hard. It is at the top range of soft. All our other levels of things were fine as well. We do have a sediment filter and can't imagine not having one. We get a lot of black particles that look like sand with some glittery specs. We have to change that filter every month.

DLM2000 did you ever figure out why your toilets were etched?

Congratulation on discovering water softeners. LOL

Get your water tested before selecting the equipment. You may need other media .. filters, ph neutralizers, etc. You CAN NOT SOFTEN THE WATER WITHOUT SALT. You can condition to a degree, or you can filter but not soften.

We have well and septic, and a whole house RO filter and softener that discharges out into the woods on the side of our house. We are on 7+ acres, so I guess that’s ok to do.
We love the system, but it was pricey - and we were told they will need repairs/replacement within 3-4 years, which was surprising.
We have a company that comes out monthly to add the salt and perform any required maintenance.

This is the sediment that used to collect in our toilet tanks...

We have a softener and our showers and tubs and faucets and sinks, etc no longer have lime build- up but some relatives complain of the “ film” left after showering and say it feels like the soap doesn’t totally rinse off. I don’t notice it. ...just the positive parts of having soft water.

Maybe we need to adjust the water softener though? is There such a thing as water being too soft?

Lynda....we have a lifetime guarantee on our tanks, 5 year warranty on valves and 2 years of free service. I’m not sure what the norm is. Ours is not an RO system though.

nidnay that looks similar to the sediment that we have.

Actually this thread just reminded me that we need to change the sediment filter.

Vinnmarks.....how do you know when it’s time to change your filter? We have 2 Big Blue 1 micron filters for sediment....one for our irrigation system and one for the house water. I read somewhere that if you install two pressure gauges...one before and one after the filter you will be able to tell when to replace it because of the pressure drop in the gauge that comes after (rather then just waiting for your entire household water pressure to drop and be a problem.

you may want to purge your tanked water heater if you have one. Heat and lime scale do a number on water heaters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAzKts6Wp1Q

nidnay we go by sight. Our filter is in a clear cylinder so we can see it.

Vinnmarks......I think that’s a spin down filter....does it look something like this clear one? We had two of those and they barely worked (lots of sediment still came through) and it needed flushing all the time which is why my water guy recommended the Big Blues. Those toilet tank pics were when we had the spin down filters. I hate maintenance so the the less I have to fool with things the better :)

Here's what ours looks like;

Dirty and clean(just changed it)

Ha....since I’m no water expert I have no clue what type of filter that is, but I like the fact that you can see when it’s dirty!

I'm not an expert either. I was told it's a sediment filter. It has a filter that looks like the following that gets changed out. It's been working fine. No sediment in our toilet tanks at all.

following...

Those are nasty sediment filters, you will be replacing those monthly. It spills water and very annoying.

Replace with backwashing filter (0 maintenance)

https://www.amazon.com/Backwashing-Fleck-Chlorine-Chloramines-Chemicals/dp/B00D0HD7IC/ref=sr_1_18

I've had several brands of softeners in different homes, on both city water and private wells. IMO Kinetico works best and there is no discharge of brine water (how it works is a mystery). Uses almost no salt compared to others I've had. Softness level can be adjusted. A softener is a perk of civilized living. Your appliances and clothes last much longer.

@nidnay & vinmarks - we never did figure out the cause of the etching. And more curious still is that it happened on only 2 of our 3 toilets, all the same brand and model. We have a whole house filter but no softener. No build up or spotting issues so we don't feel it's warranted. And we love the taste of our water as is- deep well through granite.

BT we have been replacing the sediment filters monthly for a year and a half and it's really not a big deal. Very little water spills. Just some drips. We have a slop sink nearby. We use a plastic tray that we hold under the filter when unscrewing and plop the whole thing into it and bring it the sink to clean. Really not a big deal.