Saltless Systems

The hope of having a saltless water softener has been around for years. Unfortunately, these kind of products may not be commercially viable for many years. The goal of water softening is to virtually eliminate hard water scale in a home, greatly reduce soap spotting and soap scum, provide cleaner hair, skin, and clothes, along with reducing the amount of soap and cleansers needed. Some well-known scams have claimed to use magnets, stacks of small pyramids wrapping the household plumbing, and coils of magic beads on the exterior of the piping.

A scale reduction device runs water through a self-sacrificing media that is used to sequester the hardness minerals. These are often put on hot water only applications in an attempt to reduce hardness scale formation around water heaters. Great caution should be used with these materials as they do not work well in all water situations. Consumers should ask how well these work on high pH waters, heavily chlorinated water, or waters with a lot of organics.

In addition, since the media in saltless treatment systems slowly dissolves, these units need to be rebedded every 6 to 12 months at a high cost. In addition, you need to ask what exactly is being added to the drinking water from the dissolved material? Saltless scale reduction system can cost much more to operate than conventional water softeners.