Water Hardness
When you are considering buying a water softener, it is important to know the hardness of your water. When it comes time to program the water softener, it will ask for a hardness value. If you use tap water, you must test the hardness.
Water Consumption
The second factor in calculating your daily softened water needs is your household water consumption. The most accurate way to calculate this is to look at a water bill that shows total consumption over a given period of time (usually a month). You can use this information to figure out how much water your household uses on average per day. If you do not have this information, simply multiply the number of people in your home by 75 gallons per day. This will give a fairly accurate estimate of daily water consumption.
Calculating Daily Softening Needs
Multiply your daily water consumption by the hardness of your water (corrected for iron). This number is your daily softened water needs. Softeners typically regenerate weekly.Taking the daily softening need as 3000 grains/day and multiplying that by 7 days, we would need a water softener that can soften 21,000 grains of total hardness to regenerate weekly.
Based on the above data, you can choose the right water softener for you.
