We bought a
Morton Water Saver for $400 on sale. We have seven people in our family though so we bought a mid to large size unit. If you have less people in your family, you can pay less for a much smaller unit.
With water softeners, you need to have experience with plumbing. So, we hired a plumber to install it for $300.
Disclaimer with water softeners:
Water softeners remove the calcium, magnesium and some iron from the water and exchanges it for sodium chloride.
Long story short, shampoos that gave you slip, will no longer work. For instance, I have used QP's Conditioning Creme poo for over five years. Once the water softener was installed, bye bye QP. The chemist at QP confirmed that conditioning ingredients in their poo will not work with sodium chloride.
So now, literally
NO poos work for me anymore. It seems to dred, harden or stiffens my hair kind of. Some poos more than other are worse. So far, I only deal with it the conditioner softens it back up.
The poos on the market are formulated for hard water...not soft water.
If poos are not a big deal for your regimem, then it's not a problem. Conditioners work just fine though.
If anyone has found a poo that works with a water system, please PM and let me know!
Edited: Based on what I've learned, shower filters only remove
chlorine not all of the other minerals that are found in hard water. Keep in mind, water softeners
do not remove
100%. Research it first before buying. The Morton reps (esp Lonnie) was extremely informative.