Whole house water softeners, refiners, etc.

[orangecat1]

background: we bought a HUD foreclosure in 2004, has a whole house "refiner", fancy term for softener imo. Hasn't worked for a while so I called two companies to get bids to come out and work on it, the manufacture ecowater systems and rainsoft.

Rainsoft charges a starting rate of $83.50 for the first half hour, and then a dollar a minute after that.

Ecowater Texas - they said they would charge $67 to come out and see if it was working.

So, I went with Ecowater, now here comes the fun. The resin had disappeared, he said we were looking for some gold colored or tan colored material, it was all black.

according to the serviceman, he is going to have the unit taken out, cleaned, made basically brand new, pretty big $, $1500.

But wait, for just $400 more he promised he could have the unit relocated to the garage, the trenching, the pvc pipe, everything.

I made him write the $400 figure on the work order, so I could compare

 

[orangecat1]

Is there any problem with digging underneath the driveway? Cost is much cheaper for the PVC pipe, is it impossible to dig under a driveway? If he could do that he could only use 30 feet of pipe, instead of the 164 feet.

Called a plumber who said without looking at house it would be at least $3000 to dig trench and lay that pipe.

So, it will be interesting to see if they try to get out of this thing.

Anybody had any experience with either Rainsoft or Ecowater Texas?

 

[texascoder]

I had a Rainsoft water softener/filtration system installed right after I had my house built in 1994 (Austin area). Sweetwater Home Services installed it and have serviced it over the years. It's still going strong although it's about time for an upgrade. Not sure if I'm going to do that though as I'm tentatively planning to have a new house built. I've always been happy with the service I got from the Sweetwater folks.

 

[orangecat1]

plumber came out, found almost direct route from the water to inside the front portion of the garage, did what appears to be a very good job, did dig under a sidewalk, punched three holes in the brick for the pipes, it's hooked up, and looks good.

really impressed with the way the water feels. even just picking up a plate from the dishwasher feels much better. Showers, totally different, and this is with a pretty low setting for the grains.

 

[texascoder]

You'll probably like the fact that the unit is in the garage. Mine is outside the house beside the patio in back. I built an enclosure for it and all the pipes are insulated of course, but during the cold spell last winter the pipes froze briefly. I thawed them out before any damage was done but still was kinda scary. Anyway, you shouldn't have that problem with the unit in the garage. And I know exactly what you mean by the water quality. I'll never go without a softener myself.