What size water softener do I actually need?
It is the most common question we get, and the honest answer is that it takes about five minutes on the phone. Here is what goes into those five minutes, so you know what we are asking and why, and so you can rule out the wrong size before anyone quotes you one.
Size is a capacity number, not a physical size
A 32,000 grain unit and a 48,000 grain unit take up about the same corner of the garage. The number is how much hardness the resin inside can hold before it needs to clean itself. That cleaning is the regeneration cycle, the rinse where the unit uses salt from the brine tank to flush the hardness it has collected and start over.
So the size question is really two questions. How hard is the water coming in, and how much of it does your household run through the softener between regenerations.
San Antonio water is at the hard end of the scale
SAWS reports San Antonio water at 15 to 20 grains per gallon. That is firmly in the very hard range, which is why the math here is different from most of the country. A softener that would coast in a city with 7-grain water is working two to three times as hard on the same gallons here. Every gallon through the house uses up two to three times the capacity.
That is also why the same house in Boerne,Bulverde orSchertz can land on a different answer. Hardness changes by utility and by well, and the first thing we do on any job is test the tap, free, for hardness, iron and chlorine.
What decides your size is how much water the house uses
How many people live there, normally. How many bathrooms. Whether there is a big soaking tub that gets used, how much laundry runs in a week, whether the irrigation or a pool fill is on the softened side. People and bathrooms are the two that matter most, which is why they are two of the five questions we ask on every call.
Get the size wrong in either direction and it costs you. A unit that is too small regenerates constantly: more salt, more water down the drain, and the resin wears out early. A unit bigger than the house needs costs more up front and gives nothing back for it. Regeneration on a correctly sized softener is a quiet, occasional thing you stop noticing.
The three sizes we install
We carry three, all built on the same 10% cross-link resin and Clack valve, so the only thing that changes between them is capacity.
Between them they cover nearly every house in the San Antonio area. If the smaller one does the job, we will tell you so. There is no reason to sell a 64K into a two-person house, and we do not.
Why the resin grade matters more than the size
Two softeners with the same capacity number can have very different lives, and the difference is the resin. There are three grades you will run into: 6%, 8% and 10% cross-link. On chlorinated San Antonio water, 6% resin breaks down in about two years. A lot of big-box units come with 8%. We carry 10% only, on every size, because chlorine is in every gallon of city water here and the resin has to stand up to it for years, not months.
When you get three or four prices for the same size of softener, the resin grade or the valve is usually what is changing between them. That is worth asking about before you compare numbers.
What we ask on the phone
Five questions, and then we can usually give you a real price without a site visit:
- City water or well?
- How many bathrooms?
- How many people live there, normally?
- Is there attic access in the garage?
- What is your ZIP code?
If the house is not pre-plumbed for a softener, three photos do the rest: one from the water meter looking at the house, one of each side of the house from the sidewalk, and one of the garage with the door open. Text them to the same number you would call.
Well water is a different conversation
On a private well, iron and sulfur change the math. A softener sized by the rules above and installed on its own will foul on iron, which is how a unit fails in two years. On a well we test first, put the right media ahead of the softener if the test calls for it, and size the softener behind it, which is why well homes land on the LPWS48K or LPWS64K. That is its own page: well water iron and sulfur removal.
Not sure? That is what the call is for
Tell us the household and we will size it. The test is free, the quote is over the phone, and the size we name is the size we install: five years on the valve, ten years on the tank, one year of free service checkup.
Mon–Sat 7am–5pm · Closed Sundays
Prefer email? jason.hartfelder@littleprofitwatersofteners.com or use the contact form.