OK...you've got household water trouble...got that. Sounds like more than usual, too.

Couple of questions....

1) City water or well?

2) Have you had independent test of your water supply? Until you know what's in it, there's not much sense in thinking about solutions.

"We currently have a Culligan system and have to put so much salt in it to soften the water that it leaves a build up on anything it dries on."

Apparent with this sentence that you've got an entirely wrong idea about what's going on there. See #2

Holy cow, if this was city water that tested like this we'd have a lot of very sick people.....it's well water.

We are in the process of independent testing....won't have results for a while.

Can you explain your last sentence? We do have the well water chlorinated and filtered before it is softened. I thought the only thing that could be leaving the residue and pitting was the salt in the softened water as everything else is to be filtered out.

I'm not the pro, here, but the function of the salt is ion-exchange within the media of softener. Total dissolved solids would not be affected and I suspect that's where the deposits are coming from....not salt, per se, but everything else that's in there.

Also, chlorine queers softener media over time. Could be the softener can't do it's job anymore. Understand you have to do that but you may want to consider activated charcoal unit downstream of chlorinator upstream from softener depending on the chlorination level your situation requires. 50 grains hard means that softener has a lot of work to do. Depleted or compromised media may need to be addressed.

In any event, recommend getting those test results and coming back. I won't have much to offer about that, but I do know whatever one is going to do or consider doing has to start there. There are people on this forum that are pretty good about feedback once they know that information. Your combination of considerations is over my head but I'm thinking a different combination of equipment may be required.

Thanks....you may be on to something with the chlorine queering up the softener. I'm pretty sure we're using a heavy dose of chlorine because of the bacteria (coliform, e-coli).

@ 50gpg hardness a considerable amount of sodium or potassium ions are being exchanged into the water (@ 2:1) plus the iron content and other things and the raw water's TDS has to be dealt with.

The build-up you are complaining about may be the cause of too small a softener or an incorrectly setup softener or a malfunctioning softener.

With the results of a comprehensive water test (hardness, iron, manganese, PH, TDS, bacteria, nitrates to start), the # of people in the house, and the # of bathrooms in the house we can advise you regarding a correctly sized softener and then determine what the regenerant use would be to compare with your current softener's salt use.

As I read the lit, the water conditioners-descalers (no salt softeners(?)) do not do deal well with high hardness water.

50gpg is a lot but there are people successfully treating water twice as hard without the problems that you are complaining about.

Rather than look at new technology that may or may not work let's see what needs to be treated and see whether your current treatment hardware is even in the ballpark. Well water changes and yours may have changed for the worse while you weren't looking.

Having comprehensive tests IS important but also tests must match the type of equipment to correct those issues. Results for nitrate/nitrite, bacteria and TDS have little to do with softeners as they deal primarily with hardness minerals and ferrous iron.

Of course if other contaminants ARE important and if they exceed limits, then they need to be addressed.

As far as the no-salt systems, I would avoid them as I have never seen a positive result, let alone a satisfied customer.

Andy Christensen, CWS-II

"Having comprehensive tests IS important but also tests must match the type of equipment to correct those issues".

One could only know what type of equipment would be required to correct the problems identified by comprehensive tests.

"Results for nitrate/nitrite, bacteria and TDS have little to do with softeners as they deal primarily with hardness minerals and ferrous iron".

A comprehensive test is exactly that... comprehensive. When the health of the people in the household can be negatively effected by the well water they consume and use comprehensive tests covering both the niceness and the SAFENESS of the water is step one. Then with the results of those comprehensive tests the homeowner can decide, hopefully with the jelp of a professional, what aesthetic properties of the water will be treated while treating ALL the safety related water problems.

Surely, as a professional, you agree that successful water treatment takes into account all the problems that need to be treated, the specific equipment needed to treat all the problems, and integrating all that equipment so it works and plays well together while being reliable, easy to maintain, and cost effective to purchase.

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I was just to clear up the misunderstanding that someone might have by relating water tests results to the equipment that manages them.