Whole-house water softeners in Omaha: what every tap means

Water Softener Omaha is an independent referral service, not an installer or plumber. When you send the form, your details are passed to an independent local water treatment pro, who can contact you and quote the work.

Why a softener goes on the main line

M.U.D. says its water, lime-softened to about 170 mg/L or 10 grains per gallon, deposits small amounts of tan calcium carbonate in pipes and on fixtures. Hard water deposits commonly build up on dishes, fixtures and basins, and as scale on pipes. A softener at one tap would leave the rest of the house, the water heater included, on hard water. So a softener goes where the main line enters, after the meter and the main shutoff, ahead of the water heater.

Which taps should it feed?

Whole house does not have to mean every single tap. Decide with the installer which lines stay on hard water:

• Outdoor spigots. Water for the lawn and garden does not need softening, and leaving it off saves salt.
• A kitchen cold tap. Some households keep one tap unsoftened for drinking and cooking, because a salt-based softener adds sodium in exchange for the hardness it removes, as M.U.D. notes. On a sodium-restricted diet, ask your doctor.
• A refrigerator line. Decide whether it should be softened, filtered or both.

How much of this is possible depends on how the plumbing runs from the main line, which is something the pro can tell you on the visit.

The water heater

The water heater is part of the reason a softener goes on the main line. Utility water quality reports note that hard water can cause some types of scaling in pipes and water heaters, and on plumbing fixtures. Water utilities also note that some softening systems have the potential to increase the corrosivity of the water, which in turn can damage the anodes in a water heater. Ask the installer how the softener will be set for your home and what the water heater maker says about softened water. Keep the water heater’s manual with the softener’s, so anyone servicing either can see both.

Softener plus a filter or RO

A softener removes hardness and nothing else. If the water also tastes of chlorine, smells, or stains, a whole-house filter may be quoted with it; filters for taste and odor are covered by NSF/ANSI 42 and for health-related contaminants such as lead by NSF/ANSI 53. Whether a filter goes before or after the softener depends on the equipment, so ask the installer to explain the order they propose. For drinking water, a reverse osmosis unit at the kitchen sink is a separate system certified to NSF/ANSI 58; the reverse osmosis system in Omaha page explains it.

Sizing a whole-house softener

A whole-house unit is sized from your water’s hardness and the household’s use. On M.U.D. water the starting figure is about 10 grains per gallon; a test of your tap confirms it, and a home on a well or another system needs its own test. Ask the pro to show the hardness, the number of people and the capacity they sized the unit from, and to confirm the unit is certified to NSF/ANSI 44. The page on water softener installation in Omaha goes through sizing and the parts of an install in detail.

Questions to settle before the install

• Which taps and lines will be softened, and which left hard?
• Where will the unit go, and is there a drain and an outlet there?
• How will it be set for my water heater?
• Will a filter be added, and in what order?
• Which licenses and permits does the job need where I live?

Questions people ask