Water Softener Advice

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Get your water tested for pH, hardness, iron, manganese, and other possible contaminants. It will be a more complete test and not the minimal purity test performed for safety on a new water source. Often this test is free from the sellers of water treatment systems. The regular required tests of a well just test for contamination from things like ecoli and other things that are dangerous.

Once you know the amount of junk in your water you can size a system to treat it. Until then you are just guessing with your checkbook.

Most "rust" in water is actually dissolved iron or manganese and doesn't precipitate out onto your fixtures until exposed to oxygen so physical filters don't work. You need to first precipitate the iron out of solution and then filter the chunks.

Once you get your well water free of the bad stuff it can be quite nice to drink from the tap. No chlorine, no swamp taste, no sulfur smells, etc.