We had a home on well water which was somewhat hard. It left spots on glasses, cars after washing, etc. We decided to purchase a water softener to improve our water's quality. The Whirlpool seemed to be the best quality for the money. We have lots of other Whirlpool appliances and trust their products, we we purchased this softener. Our well is pretty close the middle of our property and we do not have a well house for it which means the softener would be out in the open. Due to all of this we did hire someone to install the unit, so I cannot comment on the ease of installation. We used the system saver salt pellets. At times the pellets would clump causing a "salt bridge" which would lead to us having harder water again. We only discovered this issue after reading through the booklet that came with the softener. I am not sure if this is due to the unit being outdoors or just something that happens. Other than that, the softener worked great. We did have problems if it ran out of salt, so don't allow that to happen. The panel started to peel off from being outdoors, so that is why I would recommend keeping it indoors or under a cover.

JShaner

Zephyrhills, FL

This water softener saves space compared to the older style of 2 seperate tanks.  It softens the water very well and uses an average amount of salt.  It is not picky about the type of salt you use.  It is more attractive than you would expect a water softer to be and is very easy to keep clean.  The controls are easy to use and figure out.  It is kind of idiot proof.  It blinks at you when it is getting low on salt, and, just in case you don't know why it's blinking, the readout tells you to check the salt level.  It prompts you with what you need to do to set it up.  You can schedule it to reset any time of day, which is wonderful because I can set it to go off after my off peak appliances have finished their jobs so that there is no interference.  The manual was concise and easy to follow.  My husband installed this himself to replaces a unit that had gotten moldy while our house was vacant.  He did have to adjust some plumbing to fit this unit in as the old unit had a different feed configuration.  I have never noticed any noise from any water softeners regenerating until this unit though.  It is not super loud, but it can be a bit alarming if you are up at 3am when this starts to reset because you can hear it upstairs. (The unit is located on our lower level.)  Other than the noise issue, it does it's job well, is easy to program, and stays clean.

yahshur

Cambridge, MN