I moved into a 54 year old house about a year ago. It's my first encounter with well water as a home owner. Immediately after moving in we replaced the shower head in the main bath. Four months later the water flow was starting to really become distorted. In July I had to replace a water supply line in the kitchen because of a pinhole leak. We're using a lot of soap and running into all of the traditional hard water symptoms. Persistent soap scum and mineral deposits. So we thought we just needed a softener. We've met with five water treatment firms and had a sixth send a proposal in the mail. All found varying degrees of hardness 4-8 grains, but also noticed pH from 6.5-6.9. The two most recent who measured pH at 6.5 and 6.6 recommended neutralizers as well as softeners. Actually one recommended a softener plus a neutralizer, and another recommended a combination unit which uses zeolite to control the ph and a seperate resin tank to soften in a single unit. We had the county come out to collect a water sample. They'll only test for bacteria, hardness, pH, iron, but we're having another lab do a comprehensive workup, to hopefully find out with some accuracy and precision from an independent source who doesn't have a vested interest in selling us treatment equipment. In the meantime we're still evaluating softening and neutralizing options. Does anyone have any thoughts on limestone acid neutralizers versus chemical feed pumps (soda ash)? The limestone neutralizer would raise our hardness in dealing with the pH issue so we'd be using more salt and regenerate more often. Which is why the chemfeed pump looked more attractive. Since we're on septic, I don't want to put any more salt or waterinto the system than necessary. I'd dump it right out on the lawn if I didn't think that it would kill the grass. I liked the "no power requirement" and "no electronics to fail" approach of Kinetico, but their higher cost made electronic demand regen units from Rainsofta and Culligan look more attractive. Rainsoft also has the perq of offering to replace our well tank (too small and pretty old) and hot water heater (20+ yrs old) for us at the same time. We'd been planning on replacing both, but wanted to do everything at once. Any advice appreciated. We've done lots of study online and from books, but haven't found much info on what to do about the acid situation. Thanks to all-
-jp