carol-my sink is now around 10 years old. No chips or any problems. Just take a minute before retiring for the night to use sponge with water and some Dawn or Bon Ami or Bar Keeper's Friend to wipe down. I also use Johnson's Baby Oil maybe once a month to give it that shine like it had when first installed. I also have the sink guard that I ordered from day 1 which helps to protect the sink IMO. Here are 3 pics that I took today. First shows sink-washing down with well water. 2nd shows after some drops of baby oil or mineral oil to give the sink that shine of newness. Last pic shows sink prep done with sink guard in place. Of course when I look at pics of this sink when first installed around 10 years ago it now looks like it's been used. Even though I have a dishwasher since there is just my husband and myself I find myself washing dishes in this sink on a almost daily basis. I think it still looks great for its age and I'm still happy I got it. Hope this helps with your decision. My sink is a Blanco silgranit.

KCl is potassium chloride and simply a no sodium substitute regenerant for NaCl which can be used in ANY ion exchange regenerating softener. KCl will not eliminate the spots so perhaps you misheard what thy said. Needing an outlet and a drain means a regenerating softener and IMO is a better idea. Too big a softener is not better and brings more problems than people and many softener salesman understand. Just right is what you want and it's easy to calculate and it will simply regenerate more often when the kids are home. That is the beauty of an on demand regenerating softener. "When I asked them about the spotting, they only said it shouldn't be happening" You should find yourself a water treatment professional who knows what they are doing cause your Culligan people don't seem to. I'd recommend a water test by an independent certified lab. Based on those findings I'd get an industry standard softener correctly sized for the water conditions and you two and set up to run efficiently. I'd determine the SFR of the plumbing and fixtures and then add a second BB 20" in parallel to the first with pressure gauges before and after each filter so you'd know when the pressure drop indicates filter replacement is necessary OR get a correctly sized backwashing carbon filter to place ahead of the softener and remove the BB filter canister. When that is done correctly you should be where you want and if not resolving problems will be a lot easier. Any TDS meter is OK and the $12-$30 ones are fine. There's always TDSmeter.com if you want to go nuts For hardness testing the Hach 5b is pretty popular. This post was edited by justalurker on Tue, Jul 2, 13 at 1:11

Your landlord wouldn't appreciate you mucking about with the plumbing at all then. There isn't anything you can do here that wouldn't be a Rube Goldberg mass of a half dozen potentially leaky brass ''adapters'' from your shutoff valve. Garden hoses are different sizes than undersink shutoff valves and the ONLY way to do this correctly messes with the home's permanent piping to create a permanent hot tap.

As you use and scrub your sink, any topical SS polish is going to wash off. I had been using a SS spray, but lately I just give sink a quick scrub (once over with the blue scrubby sponge) w/ or w/out a sprinkle of BKF, Cameo, or Zud. I've also taken to following that up a few times a week (sometimes more often, sometimes less) with a few spritzes of the alcohol-water-lavendar oil spray that I've been mixing up and using all over, an dwiping dry with a microfiber or paper towel. The alcohol mixture seems to help remove any dulling haze/residue left behind from the powdered cleaners, dish soap, etc. From start to finish takes a couple of minutes at most.