I can say I have been satisfied with our culligan.

we had a 20 year old culligan unit which we just replaced. they we're willing to service it but I decided it was wiser to replace it with an updated unit.
Due to problems with our well, the old unit control was getting damaged by air bursts in the system. so after getting that fixed we put in the new unit.

I love when urban area dwellers complain about the costs of water and sewage. In the last couple of years I have had to replace the well, water softener, and leach field of my septic system. some where just north of 40K in total.

 

Dean,

Take a look at this link for me if you have time. I can't tell if it makes sense or their trying to baffle me with bs.

http://www.qualitywatertreatment.com/PDF/Q...P%20Details.pdf

Thanks,

Nate

 

If I had a dime for everyone of my building suppliers had given me that lame excuse for why I should spend the extra money to buy their product instead of a readily available, less expensive product, I'd be rich. Not counting all the money I'd have saved.

That's a complete crock!!

HD and Lowes could not stay in business if that were the case. HD and Lowes have the GREAT advantage in that you know you can get parts and service. Kinda like Sears in the old days. (I'm really surprised that some of you still have Sears near you as they've all but disappeared in many parts of the country).

I heard the same baloney about my well pump. "Mine uses this and mine uses that but that HD pump doesn't and will only last 2-3 years!" But when I checked I found that the HD pump had all the bells & whistles and more. The economies of their buying power meant that I could get a high quality pump for substantially less than the well guys. They needed to make a much larger profit on each of their sales because they didn't make nearly as many sales as HD did so their pricing was astronomical.

When I contacted the manufacturers direct they used the HD and Lowes pumps as comparisons to theirs. As an aside I discovered a fatal flaw in the well pump installation that would have limited any pump I used to about a 2-4 year life before it would have to be pulled and reinstalled.

On the well pump it ended up that I spent less than half what I would have spent had I listened to the salesman spouting the drivel.

 

I have a Water Boss:

http://www.waterboss.com/

Bought it locally about 12 years ago and installed it myself for about $600. Still works great. I like it's small physical size. It has a built in, self cleaning 15 micron filter.

 

Wild, our biggest influencer is our own personal experience. If your's has been good with big box stores - great.

I wouldn't walk into a Home Depot if they were giving them away after my experience with them. As for Lowes and their great purchasing power - I don't know; maybe on some things. For example, we bought a coffee maker there last night; even with a 10% sale it was only $2 less than the same brand shelf price at Sears.

 

We also have a Culligan unit. It lasted more than 30 years and a year ago we replaced the tank and the controlling unit. We had very good results with the Culligan.

 

There are only a few deionizing resin producers. All the water softener outfits use the same stuff from the same suppliers. As far as the valves and electronic controls go, Fleck is one of the top manufacturers around which most of the WS companies also use. WS companies also tend to buy their tanks from the same manufacturers, but there are a few exceptions. There is nothing magical about the Culligan or any of the other boutique units.

 

From the looks of it, the thing does not remove calcium from the water. What it does according to the vendor is to change the calcium from its ionic (salt) form to an inactive crystalline form. There's little mention of magnesium or any of the other minerals often present in water. I wouldn't buy one, I would stick with the more conventional type softener and use Potassium chloride in it..

 

Wow, that is bad. Luckily, we've never had to use a water softener. Good luck!

 

I decided to go with Culligan. With the on-demand-salt usage we should save 50% over what we've been using since it was strickly on-a-timer. With just the two of us we were going through 160# of salt a month before. Our break even should be about 4.2 years.

Thanks everyone for your input.