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Well, that didn't take long. True to form, once I began investigating water softeners, I spent a LOT of time researching, obsessing, and becoming as knowledgeable as I could.

In the end, after speaking with Bill Cook at CAI Technologies, I have decided to buy a water softener myself and have it installed by a local plumber.

I went with the Fleck 5000SXT valve with a 32,000 grain resin tank. I'm told that in my use it should re-generate every 7-8 days.

Fleck valves seem to be well known and highly regarded, and the salt tanks are just tanks - some people literally use plastic garbage cans. Aside from working with the plumber to perhaps deliver non-softened water to an external spigot or two, I'm pretty much set and feel I've made a good decision.

Installation should be around $300.FWIW, the prices of various systems, installed:

• Gold Series from Culligan - $2189
• Kinetico Electric - $1500
• Kinetico Non-Electric - $2500
• McKinley Plumbing, CSI System - $1400
• RainSoft - $????
• CAI - $700 + installation (~$300)

Manuals or Instructions (PDF) are:

• Water Softener Installation
• Programming the Fleck 5000SXT Valve