Water Softener

[REDBEV MONTANA]

Shopping for water softener, having hard time deciding on which one to purchase as there are so many to choose from. Convinced we should get one especially since we will be going full timing soon. Wondering what most of you seem to be happy with. Thanks in advance for comments.

[jgavin]

Ours is made by "On the Go" been happy with it, beginning of 3rd season with it.

[Mrs. CountryGuy]

Love our On the Go, takes table salt, small containers, cheap at the grocery store. No need to purchase rock salt and store larger amounts of it in the basement. Works well.

[jcurtis934]

On the go as well, four years old now. John

[Starmaster]

Hi RedBev,

We purchased a 12800 grain softener from 602abcwater.com. Great price on the product, about a $50 savings compared to the 8000 grain on-the-go. It works very well, we used it in Tucson this winter for two months and only needed to recharge it the week we left.

However, when I ordered ours back in Nov last year, they were having some "issues" with the warehouse getting the right thing shipped. After them sending things to me three different times, they finally got it right. Hopefully they cleaned out the dipships in the warehouse and sent them sailing!

Just for they record, water softeners are not "rocket science" or magic. Just about any brand will work. It's really just how conveniently they recharge and backwash that makes them different.

Be sure to order some hardness test strips when you order the softener. You need those to test how hard the water is and determine when to recharge. The other thing to order is a P3 water meter, search Amazon for a P3 P0550 water meter, about $13. It tells you how much water you use.

When you know the water hardness, you can determine how many gallons your softener will do by dividing its grain rating by the water hardness. For example in Tucson our water was 10 grains of hardness, so our 12800 grain softener did about 1300 gallons of water. When the P3 water meter read 1300, I knew the softener was ready for a recharge.

One last suggestion is to put an active charcoal filter inline before the softener. The charcoal removes chlorine which can cause a premature breakdown of your softener media. Install a charcoal filter that also does sediment, it keeps the softener media cleaner and reduces the need for back flushing. I use the Camco $15 inline filter.

Dave

[DQDick]

On the Go for us also. Going on 5 years.

[rohrmann]

We have a Watts RV Pro 10,000 grain softener, which works the same as the On The Go brand, table salt to recharge. They also make a 15,000 grain model that will last longer between recharging.