Water Too Hard?

You just moved in to your new house and it turns out the first person to welcome you is your local sales guy for a company that makes water treatment systems. All he is asking for is an hour of your time and on top of that he is offering a set of super sharp kitchen knives for just seeing him. Which is kind of cool, as you recall you lost all your sharp knives when you happened to pass by that FED building, where, as you found out, they printed that hot banking and corporate bailout money to be spent on executive bonuses...

Well, your new knives look cool. The guy has just paid for getting intimate with you. First of all he is going to test the quality of your tap water and somehow it always turns out to be really bad. Bad for your skin. Bad for your health. Bad for your clothes. Bad for your appliances. And bad for your finances. And you start suspecting that guy can really save you. Then he will ask you a few questions. All he needs to know is how much you spend annually on soaps, shampoos, detergents, and so on. Then he tells you that you have to spend that much just because your water is too hard, and you will spend a fraction of that once you make your water soft. And then it will not damage your appliances and your clothes when you wash them.

All you have to know is that the machine costs only a few grand and you will break even after a number of years by just saving on soaps and detergents. And they will even throw in a free kitchen set to filter your tap water before you drink it or prepare food with it. Sounds really cool, doesn't it?

Not really. What you do need to know is what kind of maintenance the equipment will need and how much it is going to cost you on an annual basis. Amazingly, in most cases it will be way more than you actually spend on soaps and detergents.

Now you are probably thinking that my point is that you should not buy it. Well, not really. The decision is yours. But you need to know what questions to ask and what kind of numbers you are really looking at. And then, of course, you may choose to enjoy your rain-soft tap water as well as your new Chinese kitchen knives, which, by the way, will probably last several months, as long as you are really careful while using them...