Does a water softener protect your plumbing?

June 2, 2021 4:50 PM

Should we include a whole-house water softener in our plumbing replacement plans?

We are planning to re-pipe our house, including replacing the supply line up to the meter. Our current pipes are easily twenty years past the time they should have been replaced and it's kind of a miracle we haven't had a huge failure. We are probably going to go with PEX pipe, mostly because of the price. Our city water is very hard (recently tested at 14.6 grains per gallon in our neighbourhood). We live in a very hot climate where frozen pipes are not really ever a problem.

I've had three plumbing companies come out to do quotes for us. One of them recommended installing a water softener, but the other two did not mention it. The person who recommended it told me their reason for suggesting a water softener was that the chlorine and calcium in our water makes the fittings (not the PEX itself) turn brittle quite quickly, so basically in order to protect our investment in new pipes we should treat the water before it reaches them. I'm not certain how true this statement is.

I'm hesitant to add the upfront installation cost and the ongoing maintenance hassle of a water softener to our plumbing system if that isn't really true. We aren't bothered by the hard water in our day-to-day lives, and in fact I kind of hate showering in soft water. So if there is no real protective value that a water softener offers, we would not install one.

Barring the unexpected, we hope to live in this house for decades. We're ready to put a little bit of extra money in upfront in order to get ahead of potential problems down the line. But there's a lot of other work to do too, and I can think of many things I'd rather spend the money on if a water softener really isn't necessary. Do you have any experience with this decision, or any input to offer? Is there something I'm not considering?

posted by DSime to Home & Garden (9 answers total)

I am not your plumber, but I literally just now finished clearing out hard-water buildup inside my shower drain (the existing risk of hair + goo is, IME, rendered worse with hard water so you end up with a weird crystally gunge), so I'd be inclined to get the softener if it were me and that's without saying anything re: PEX.

...and that's even though I also hate soft water for showering (and by "cleaning out" I mean using chemicals and scraping to knock down the worst accumulations but there's still stuff on the pipe walls).

Having said that, I have not yet purchased a water softener, but I do keep thinking about it.
posted by aramaic at 5:11 PM on June 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

The thing about pex and chlorine appears to be something from the 80s and 90s and it's no longer true per my 6 minutes of googling. Also I hate soft water and softeners. I'm an internet stranger but I had pex in a house I built where we had amazingly hard water and never had an issue.
posted by chasles at 5:44 PM on June 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

I think new PEX piping is problematic:

Dr. Andrew Whelton, an assistant professor at the Purdue University Lyles School of Civil Engineering and Division of Environmental and Ecological Engineering, has been researching the safety of plastic pipes since 2014. He has focused on a type of polyethylene called PEX in particular. This light, flexible tubing made from petroleum-derived chemicals is easy to install, and is about five times cheaper than copper pipes. PEX is widely used in new "green" buildings because it is energy efficient, and it is also popular for replacing corroded metal pipes in homes.

In one of the first U.S. studies to look at numerous brands of PEX pipes and their effects on water quality, Whelton's research team tested six brands produced by different manufacturing methods. They found that each type caused odors exceeding the Environmental Protection Agency's guidelines, and leached chemicals such as toluene, which is neurotoxic, and MTBE, a carcinogen that's been banned as a gasoline additive, but is a byproduct produced during PEX pipe manufacture.

Next, researchers tested water in homes where plastic drinking water pipes had been installed, comparing different brands and types of PEX, PVC, polypropylene and high-density polyethylene. They found that PEX pipes released more odors and leached more chemicals compared to polypropylene.

To date, more than 150 contaminants have been found in water that flowed through PEX pipes in these and other studies. Since each of the more than 70 brands of PEX pipes can leach different chemicals, and there are no enforceable federal regulations, it's difficult for consumers to weigh the health risks.

"We have seen significant amounts of chemicals leaching from new PEX pipes across brands and differences even within the same brand of pipe purchased from different stores," Whelton told EWG. He said the pipe materials are not tested once they are installed to see the whole range of chemicals that could leach into water and that most of the substances released into the water have not been identified. Even if the chemicals that leach are not known to be toxic, they could fuel the growth of bacteria in the pipes or cause bad odors, he added.

Whelton said homeowners who have already installed PEX pipes should flush them to reduce the amount of chemicals that could leach into water – the longer the better. In some pipes, researchers have seen significant leaching even after 30 days of use.

“Manufacturers need to do a better job cleaning their products before they provide them to you," Whelton said. "All drinking water testing data [for PEX and other pipe materials] should be made public, too.”

The linked article goes on to recommend copper, but I think copper is going to turn out to have a lot more downsides than most people now realize, and I would want polypropylene. I think softening the water as it comes in to the house would be fine, but I would also want activated carbon filtration for drinking and bathing water as it comes out of the tap.
posted by jamjam at 6:00 PM on June 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

The main risk of PEX leaching is due to over-chlorination, so if you're worried test your water -- iirc (check, I'm working on memory & a scribbled note I could be wrong!) pH should be at or above 6.5 and chlorine concentration should be at or below 4.0 parts per million.
posted by aramaic at 6:14 PM on June 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

[ugh, forgot to say, in all things plumbing use reputable manufacturers! in the case of PEX, I like Uponor.]
posted by aramaic at 6:15 PM on June 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

We put a water softener into our house (5600SXT), in an area with very hard water. I have noticed a fairly dramatic difference in the performance of various appliances between our old apartment without a water softener and our new-to-us house that newly had one (dishwasher and laundry in particular). Looking back, it's amazing how poorly our appliances cleaned things when they were working with hard water. The hard water also had constantly left substantial scaling in the toilet and kettle, pre-softener, that is now gone. We have a secondary hard water tap for the kitchen, and I notice residue from and around that currently. Our plumber said he has seen lots of build up in plumbing systems that don't have softeners, and appliances with drastically reduced lifespans, and our experience leaves me not very surprised.

The softener itself was well under $1000 for the entire gadget plus the install (I think it was something like $600 for the machine and $200 for the install, and we had a weird situation where we had had a handyman install it previously and it didn't go well, so we had to get someone official from far away to come out and redo it; you might be able to get it done more cheaply). From that point on, the whole process was very smooth. We buy 50-pound bags of salt from Costco (cost maybe $5?), and we go through about one per month. We're able to put a few bags into the tank at a time and so we really only think about the water softener quarterly. It's really a non-event. I'm extremely glad we put it in and would recommend it.

If you really don't like showering with soft water, you can perhaps run a single hard water line to the shower/bath. I wanted a hard water tap in the kitchen in order to water plants, and it cost maybe $75 extra to do and took the plumber maybe 20 minutes. You might then end up having extra mineral build-up in that one line, but at least it wouldn't be through the whole house.
posted by ClaireBear at 6:25 PM on June 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

I also live in an area with very hard water, and I'd advocate for some form of water treatment (softening or reverse osmosis) if you can swing it. I say this as someone who regularly has to disassemble and descale all my water fixtures, dishwasher, toilet hardware, etc. I shudder to think what is happening inside my washing machine, which I am unable to descale. I recently had to replace a hot water heater because it had a layer of scale almost inch thick -- which was not good for its flow or its heating efficiency. Basically, everything that the water touches has a constant buildup of scale, which reduces flow, damages moving parts, and eventually breaks the thing long before its lifespan should have been over. If I were replumbing my whole house and I could afford water treatment, I would absolutely take steps to deal with the water hardness at the same time. I don't know anything about PEX, but based on fixtures and appliances alone, it seems worth it.
posted by ourobouros at 5:02 AM on June 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

over-chlorination, so if you're worried test your water

and talk to your water provider about the frequency of chlorine burn throughs. My municipality burns it though for a week with warnings twice a year, and due to a recent busted main (this will happen more frequently) just burned the damn thing through again the last few days (the schools are still having their bathrooms closed and handing out bottled water).
posted by tilde at 7:02 AM on June 3, 2021

PEX is rather susceptible to degradation from chlorine. I wouldn't mix the two, at all. Consider using CPVC instead. It'll be more expensive, but everything is more expensive than PEX.

https://plasticpipe.org/pdf/jana-report-chlorine-testing-pex-materials.pdf

By all means, re-plumb your main house supply line if it has any lead in it, but all that calcium in your slightly alkaline water is protective, and I suspect you don't have lead showing up in your water tests.

Plumbing is not something that you have to replace every 20 years, unless you have very badly treated water. For example, I have about the same water hardness from calcium that you do, about 250 ppm permanent hardness, we do not have a water softener, and most of the pipes in the house are the original copper that were installed in the mid 1970s. The insides of the pipe have a thin crust but are otherwise fine.

The galvanized pipes are doing less well, but are not corroding through and are not blocked (although they are all 1 1/4 to 2 inch inside diameter, so it'd take a long time before the black and red oxide from the non-galvanized joints to get big enough to be a problem: almost 50 years for some of them).
posted by the Real Dan at 4:48 PM on June 3, 2021