Looking for plumbing advice, water softener to be exact

4wanderingeyes

5 year old buck +
I have a new build, a fresh well, and the hot water smells really bad like rotten eggs when it doesnt get used. I had Kinetico come out and blow me away with an estimate for a whole house water filter system, with no water softener, for $5800. After doing some research, I have found a pretty decent water filtering system for a fraction of that, but I still need a water softener. After several hours of online research, I am just as lost as I was prior to wasting my time researching water softeners online.

My water has about 9ppm iron, and it has about a hardness of 7.5. It is for a smaller house, with 2-3 people. It will be just 2, but my daughter will be staying with us on college breaks. I would like one with a water bypass for watering apple trees, and a garden. It needs to fit into a rather small area as well, like 16"x24", the hieght doesnt matter.

My searching has consisted of Menards, Lowes, and Home Depot, also Amazon, but I would prefer not to support Amazon.

If anyone has some good guidance on which one to get, I would appreciate it!
 
I never had the greatest luck with cheap ones. When I bought my house I went to the local "salt shop" and had them set me up. They said I needed a softener, and another device to remove iron/rust. I'm glad I went that way. System works well. I also priced Kinetico, and the price scared me off.
 
Are you sure thats what is causing the smell?I am guessing you had it tested if nothing else rent one to see if it helps
 
A water softener did not end the rotten egg smell from my hot water. I had switch the manufacturers anode from an aluminum or magnesium rod to an electric anode. It did the trick and has been working for 10 years. Not sure what brand it is but there are several electric anodes on the market.

I think it was a Corro-Protec anode.
 
If you only have the smell in the hot water then change the anode to a different type.
 
Bill and Buckly are spot on! It’s your anode rod. Change it out to a powered anode rod and the smell will disappear!!

Id still recommend a water softener though. GE brand from Home Depot is all I have used the last 9 years after our Culligan went out from previous home owner. No issues with it ever and monitors water usage so only back flushes when it needs to. The old Culligan simply back flushed every 2-3 days regardless if you were on a 2 week vacation or home using the water.
 
I had to replace our water softner about a year ago and we went with Fleck 5600, not bad to hook up but we had everything there already. The programing in the instructions is not real good but there is a few you tube videos out there that makes it real easy. I'm not saying this is the best but it's what we went with.

 
Water treatment systems can be crazy expensive and also a major cost for upkeep if you are running a salt type softener. Every salesman that comes to your house will tell you that you need many things you actually don't. Many people simply install a filter in the main supply line before it connects into your buffer tank, with that you need to change monthly and only filters out particles but is a cheap filtration system. However it doesn't fix hard or smelly water.

If the smell is only from the hot water side then Bill and Buckly are on the mark, if it smells like rotten eggs on both hot and cold you have sulphur water and that is pricey to deal with using softener systems. I drilled my well 15 years ago so my research is probably outdated as far as how to treatment options. All my neighbors have shallow wells and as a result have sulphur water, fortunately I knew this prior to digging a new well (the house came with a gravity fed well that failed on too much bacteria and was forced to dig a new well by code) so I asked the guys I got quotes from how to avoid it and their answer was to dig a deeper well. My neighbors wells range from 40-90' deep, mine is 195' deep and I have never had the smelly water. I don't have high Iron so I don't have the brown stains in my toilet or tub that my neighbors have either but I'm not sure if that is a direct result of digging a deeper well to be honest.
 
I do have a shallow well, they tried 3 different times, and hit a big rock about 75 feet down. So that is where it is at. I wasnt happy with the well driller, while he tried 3 times, he only moved less then 10 feet in a triangle, then gave up. I thought he should have moved to a different spot all together. When they first drilled the well, both cold, and hot was smelly, but after running the water for awhile, the cold no longer stunk, just the hot water. I did have the well guy come out and retest the water, and he said there was no harmful bacterial in the water. I did ask him why he didnt move further then 10 feet, and he said he was told by the plumber to put it in this area. I asked him to try a different area, but then he wanted to charge me again, to drill another well.

I dont live there yet, so the water doesnt get regular use, and I have been turning the hot water heater off when I leave. I am there about every weekend, or at least every other. While we use some cold water while we are there, we seldom use the hot water. The one time we did stay for a week, and used an above average amount of hot water, the hot water didnt stink anymore. Plus I did set the temp up on the hot water to 160, because I was told the high temp would kill bacteria that grown in temps from 100-130 water. The Kinetico water guy recommended I get a peroxide injected water system to kill the bacteria from the iron particles, which is the sulfur smell.

My thought was to buy a good filtering system, and a water softener and see if that works. I bought this filter system from Home Depot in hopes it helps, along with a water softener made for high iron, and with the hot water heater set higher, and once I move in there June 1st the water will get regular use, so I am hoping that takes care of most of the smell, or at least makes it manageable. I just dont know what softener to pair with this filter. When I ordered it, it had $200 off this price.

 
On a new well I would also run the heck out of it as much as you can. Hook a hose up and run all the well can take. I ended up doing this with my well for weeks. Then quite often over the next 3 months. Helped a lot with water quality.
 
Set you Hot Water heater to 145 for a few days...then drain it. Keep it at 145 for a few more days...drain it again. Then keep it at 145 for a few days and bring back down to 125. That should help with the smell.

If you ever figure out a good water filter, that is affordable, please let me know. My water SUCKS!
 
My cabin had smelly hot water when we first built the cabin and didn't spend much time up there. Once we started spending more time up there and ran through more water the smell went away. I wouldn't spend too much on possible solutions until you live there and see if just more water usage improves things.
 
I did buy that filter I linked above, and it was $200 off that price, and I think I am just going to buy a water softener from Home Depot. I will have about 10% of what Kinetico wanted.
 
Set you Hot Water heater to 145 for a few days...then drain it. Keep it at 145 for a few more days...drain it again. Then keep it at 145 for a few days and bring back down to 125. That should help with the smell.

If you ever figure out a good water filter, that is affordable, please let me know. My water SUCKS!
Agree. I had the issue in the last house and turned the water heater temp all the way up to resolve it

Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk
 
I had cranked mine all the way up, and while I was using it it full time for a week, I didnt smell it anymore.

I just read the reviews on the Corro Protec electric anodes. Sounds like the best thing since sliced bread. Unfortunately I have a Bradford White hot water heater, and I will need to see where the anode screws in before ordering one. to bad, it would be great to put it in before I am staying there for a week.
 
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All the water heaters I've seen had the anode in the top. If your heater is an older one removing the anode might be a problem. They get corroded and can be difficult to remove.

I have a Water Rite softener that's made right in Appleton. It has a feature that sanitizes the media tank by running the brine across a electric filament and changes the brine to a chlorine solution.

Years ago when I was shopping for a softener I went to a home building show and looked at softeners. Looked at a really nice one that I can't remember the name of. The company made two product lines, one handled only by dealers which had separate brine and media tanks. The other product line was handled by big box stores, their name was Water Boss. The media tank is inside the brine tank which makes for a small footprint. You can buy Water Boss at your local Menards.
 
Mine is a new build, so it was installed last fall.

One more water softener question. Being I have the whole house water filter system, that is suppose to filter out iron in the water, do I still buy a water softener that has a filter in it, and filters iron, and sediment? Does the softeners that say they treat for iron, do so any other way then to have a filter? Would it be dumb to have the whole house water filter, and have a softener that filters sediment, and iron?
 
Get a Rheem marathon tank. They’re made of plastic and don’t seem to have the sulfur smell issues that standard tanks have. We install them on homes with wells for a utility program I work with. We’ve also installed hydrogen peroxide system that one of my crew guys designed on steel tanks. I’ll see if I can get a picture of it in a couple of days.
 
Mine is a new build, so it was installed last fall.

One more water softener question. Being I have the whole house water filter system, that is suppose to filter out iron in the water, do I still buy a water softener that has a filter in it, and filters iron, and sediment? Does the softeners that say they treat for iron, do so any other way then to have a filter? Would it be dumb to have the whole house water filter, and have a softener that filters sediment, and iron?

I don't think softeners have special filters in them for iron etc. The type of resin media in the tank is what takes out the iron, depending on how much you have. When I picked the Water Rite unit the decision was made because it would handle more iron than a Culligan unit.

You should have had your water tested, it's possible you needed only a softener depending on which one you buy and how much iron it can remove from your water. You could put a cartridge sediment filter in line either before or after your tank but before your softener.
 
I talked to a buddy of mine which is a boiler guy, and he sets up water softeners for a living. He said go direct and buy it from the builders of the manufactures. He basically set me up with what would work best for my situation for a quarter of the price.
 
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