First thing that happened was upgrading the water system in the house (Sat, April 2). Being a computer programmer and less an handy guy I asked Dad to come over and help with the installation. When we bought the house we had the rough-in included for this upgrade so that made it very easy to do. I bought a water softener at Menards (this one). That was easy enough. I’m certainly good at buying things and bringing them home 
The next part, the part i needed Dad’s expertise, was hooking the new softener to the already installed piping. There was a bit of a height difference so we had to do some bends to get it all to come out. A bit of soldering, and some weird pipe glue later we had soft water! Here’s a shot of the final product:
The Morton Water Softener Unit
Getting the water where you need it. The one on the right is the master water on/off switch. The incoming water into the softener is the middle pipe coming out of the wall and you can’t really see it but the out for the softened water is the left pipe going into the wall.
Here is a better shot of the piping in and out of the wall. The rough-in we had done when we had the house built had nice easy valves to control the water flow. One valve each, the incoming, outgoing and a connection between that effectively bypasses the softener. We have to do this now (bypass the softener) if we are using the outside water. A leak in the pipe going to the outside spicket at build time was fixed by making the outside spicket use the house internal water. That wasn’t a big deal until we installed the softener. Salt water isn’t good for plants. For now we have to bypass the softener when watering. In the future Dad and I will put in another spicket that is connected to the pipe coming out the top (the blue handle). This will eliminate this annoyance.
Here’s a shot of the inside of the softener. Looks like we need more salt!
Sarah says she doesn’t notice the difference in the ‘feel’ of the water in the shower but i sure do. It feels softer .. oddly enough. We have noticed the difference with the amount of soap that needs to be used for things like the dishwasher and laundry.
