XPost: alt.home.repair, alt.consumers, misc.rural
replying to Chris Szilagyi, Walt wrote:
Hi Chris - It is important to note that softened water is not healthy for drinking regardless of what salt or additives you use. All softeners leave some amount of sodium in the water that is passed through. It is the nature
of the ion exchange process.
For drinking water, you should either have a tap that comes from before the softener (I recommend carbon filtering that) or putting the softened water through a reverse osmosis (RO) system for drinking water. I personally do not like RO water and it hurts my stomach, but the problems with RO water are another large discussion.
Another option is, of course, to buy drinking water (you can now easily find good drinking water for under $1 per gallon)
Either way, it is certainly not healthy to drink water from a water softener due to the significant sodium content. I've seen this nearly put people in
the hospital. Water softener manufacturers will not tell you this because people would be more hesitant to purchase them. Some will try to tell you
that their softener does not allow a significant amount of sodium into the water. The sodium level varies with the part of the cycle and it is in fact significant with all softeners.
This assumes you are using salt in your softener. Some softeners allow you to use Potassium Chloride, which will leave Potassium rather than Sodium in the water and this is much safer for drinking, though you should probably have
your Potassium levels checked periodically at the doctor if you use this. Potassium Chloride, though, is much more expensive and harder to find. It
also does not remove iron from the water like Sodium Chloride, so if you have iron in your water it is probably not a good option.
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for full context, visit
https://www.homeownershub.com/maintenance/iron-out-in-water-softener-toxic-505851-.htm
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