Whole Home Salt-Free Conditioner

They tackle hardness in different ways. A softener removes the calcium and magnesium. The conditioner leaves them in the water and changes them through mineral transformation, so they are far less likely to stick to your pipes, your water heater element and your shower glass. You get scale control without the classic slippery soft-water feel; if that feel matters to you, the Whole Home Water Softener is the better fit, and we say so at the test.

When you want scale control with no salt and no drain. There is no regeneration cycle and no wastewater, which makes it the low-maintenance option and a good fit where running a drain line to the equipment is difficult. It is ultra efficient and 100% maintenance free. Scale is an aesthetic and technical nuisance rather than a health risk, which is how EPA's secondary standards treat hardness deposits, so controlling it is about protecting the heater and the fixtures.

Add a carbon tank for that. The conditioner itself works on hardness and scale; a carbon tank alongside it filters the chlorine or chloramine your utility uses to disinfect the water, so you get scale control and cleaner-tasting water with still no salt anywhere in the system.

It depends on your home and on whether you add the carbon tank, so the free in-home test (about 15 minutes at your kitchen sink) produces one exact price, installation included, before you decide. The only published price on our site is the softener plus reverse osmosis package, from $2,850 installed; if the test shows your water suits a softener better, you will hear that too.