JahLaza - I recently installed a salt based water softener. The difference is night and day.
There are essentially two types these days (in the UK):
- single tank, metered, which will regenerate the resin with salt after a certain amount of water has been used.
- dual tank, metered: these do the same as above, but have two tanks, and the system flip-flops between the two.
The difference is, with a single tank, while the resin regenerates, the system is bypassed so you have hard water during that time (approx 70 minutes depending on the size). This is ideally scheduled during the night when water consumption is set to a minimum or virtually none. There are many brands, including BWT, Monarch and many others.
With a dual tank, when one tank needs to regenerate, the system swaps to the other tank and so on. The problem is, those are usually twice as expensive. Also they tend to be fully mechanical and you can’t change the water hardness setting - unless you swap the gears in the softener head. Brands are Harvey’s, Crown and there’s another one which the name escapes me - but they are all technically Harvey’s.
After a lot of research I decided to go with BWT Perla Silk. It’s very quiet. For us, we bought the 10L (smallest) and the membrane regenerates every 4 days. It consumes approx 1.2kg of salt and gives me 1,600L of water approx. Our water hardness is 310ppm. TDS is 180ppm.
The other consideration is the type of salt. You can buy blocks or pellets. The one I bought can do both. Be careful with Harvey because some of their softeners only accept salt blocks in a shape they designed… called “curved salt”. 🤦