Again, it really depends on your situation, how bad is the water to start with and how much you need/want to improve the quality of the water. For my situation a single tank softener would/did not work. Eliminating the 2am regen or the possibility of water usage during a regen is not the biggest benefit of a twin tank system. The biggest benefit of a twin tank system is that the regen happens with clean/softened water, from the other tank. With a single tank softener, the regen happens with dirty/unsoftened water, so your softener media does not get completely regenerated. Depending on what you are trying to treat/soften this can, overtime or relatively quickly cause the media to loose capacity and stop working well. For most situations this is probably not a big deal and/or can be dealt with by frequent media changes or just buying a new system when the softener looses capacity. I don't pretend to be an expert, I just know what did and didn't work for me and the reasons why. The home water filtering/softening sales field is unfortunately full of uninformed/misinformed people some genuine some not so scrupulous who will sell you a product.
I'm going to have a hard time selling a $3700 softner to the wife unless we can come up with a good list of things that it would do better than a unit that costs less. Are there twin tank softners that do not cost nearly $4k?
Might be worth it to lob a call into these guys. Looks like a twin tank system there starts at $1395. All depends how may grains of hardness you're trying to remove. http://www.cleanwaterstore.com/softeners-9100-twin-tank-well.html#item=WS004380&tab=tab1 I bought my iron filter from them. Good service, they verified what I was going to buy was going to work (and it did), and the stuff showed up at my door a week later shipped for free. Granted, it was in five boxes and the UPS guy wasnt too happy unloading the three boxes with the filter media in them, but that's beside the point. My water is very hard and very high in iron (old well wasn't as high in iron, just hard as a rock) which is why I needed to put the iron filter in front of the softener. I could probably cast engine blocks with my water if I had to. I can drink the water right out of the faucet and not gag now, which is a plus.
Start with the source, what's in the water? If you are on city water you should be able to get a report from the water company detailing the condition of the water. If you are just trying to bump the quality of marginal city supplied water then I might be inclined to go with an online company esp if you are a DIY kind of guy and can handle your own plumbing. If you are on a well I would start with a brand new raw water test from an accredited lab that you pay for, your state may be able to help with this. Don't rely on instant free water test results performed on site by a water treatment company, and be wary of any company who says otherwise. At best, instant on site water tests are a guide as to whether you have problem water but more than likely you already know that. Also, be aware that the raw water can change by the season and that the condition of your well, the age, the depth, the bore, the casing, the plumbing etc can affect the water. Then, based on the results of the water test you can decide whether it is a DIY project you are comfortable with or you should enlist the help of a local professional company. I am on a well and my water SUCKS and is unsafe, partly just luck and partly due to shoddy drilling. Actually at one point I was considering abandoning the well and drilling a new one. There were multiple failed attempts at designing a system to treat the water both by myself and by a less than scrupulous company. Ultimately, what worked was a local brick and mortar store with a stellar reputation run by a man with an education, credentials and experience who I could talk to face to face and shake his hand on a promise and a written guarantee that the equipment I was buying would solve my problems.
Yes, you can get the same units Kinecicto sells for 1500ish from a plumbing store. At least here you can.
I have good water here, just hard as rock . It was like 38 Gpg hardness which is well over most hardness scales.
