pinkoos
New Member
Hi,
Newbie here. Found this site from googling. Excellent resource. I searched for my question here, but couldn't find any posts, so I hope this hasn't been covered elsewhere.
Anyway, we've moved into a house in Houston built in 1982 and remodeled/additions made in the 90s and again in 2003. I believe the plumbing to be galvanized steel.
The water here is very hard (had a guy from Hague do a demo yesterday and found the hardness to be "8.5" - though I didn't need a demo to know the water is hard).
We moved from a relatively newer house (built in 2000) for which we had a softener installed (Culligan Platinum) in 2004. So, we are very used to and accustomed to soft water now.
I don't believe this new house has ever had a softener installed, so the pipes have been exposed to this hard water for almost 30 years (at least the original parts of the house). I can see some deposits around fixtures and inside one of the original toilet bowl tanks, etc.
I spoke with a highly regarded plumber who has been working on this house for years and he is of the opinion that it would not be a good idea to install a softener at this point. His concern is that right now, many of the hard water deposits are probably actually acting as a SEAL for possible leaks in these old pipes. If a softener is introduced, these deposits may be slowly "melted" away, exposing these leaks and causing problems.
When talking to the softener sales people, they (of course) don't think it's a concern. They say the softener won't take off any of the pre-existing deposits that are bound to the pipe, but will prevent any new deposits from being laid down.
My wife and I really want the soft water, but not at the risk of exposing leaks that have been long sealed up by the very deposits we are trying to get rid of!
Any thoughts?
Thank you from hot and humid Houston, TX!
Newbie here. Found this site from googling. Excellent resource. I searched for my question here, but couldn't find any posts, so I hope this hasn't been covered elsewhere.
Anyway, we've moved into a house in Houston built in 1982 and remodeled/additions made in the 90s and again in 2003. I believe the plumbing to be galvanized steel.
The water here is very hard (had a guy from Hague do a demo yesterday and found the hardness to be "8.5" - though I didn't need a demo to know the water is hard).
We moved from a relatively newer house (built in 2000) for which we had a softener installed (Culligan Platinum) in 2004. So, we are very used to and accustomed to soft water now.
I don't believe this new house has ever had a softener installed, so the pipes have been exposed to this hard water for almost 30 years (at least the original parts of the house). I can see some deposits around fixtures and inside one of the original toilet bowl tanks, etc.
I spoke with a highly regarded plumber who has been working on this house for years and he is of the opinion that it would not be a good idea to install a softener at this point. His concern is that right now, many of the hard water deposits are probably actually acting as a SEAL for possible leaks in these old pipes. If a softener is introduced, these deposits may be slowly "melted" away, exposing these leaks and causing problems.
When talking to the softener sales people, they (of course) don't think it's a concern. They say the softener won't take off any of the pre-existing deposits that are bound to the pipe, but will prevent any new deposits from being laid down.
My wife and I really want the soft water, but not at the risk of exposing leaks that have been long sealed up by the very deposits we are trying to get rid of!
Any thoughts?
Thank you from hot and humid Houston, TX!