<p>We have a 12 yr old water softener that needs repair or replacement. The original is a commercial grade machine. The repairman feels it is worth fixing. Our dilemma is that the cost to repair is slightly below the price of a new one from Sears. The repairman said with the Sears machines you get what you paid for.
Any insight?
(now I think we have covered almost every appliance on CC) All good for me since our house is now 12 yrs old and things are starting to break.</p>
<p>I don’t think 12 years old for a water softener is very old. I have had several much older ones that ran just fine. These were Culligan and the kind that regenerated at a set time every so many days.</p>
<p>I do think you get what you pay for in softeners. I’m not an appliance snob either. Our water is simply disgusting without a softener.</p>
<p>For my current house, we bought the deluxe, twin tank, run on demand Culligan. We had a lot of problems the first 4 years. It’s now 11 years old. They finally determined that these models had a problem with some part of the control gizmo innards. They replaced it with the parts from the previous models and it seems ok now.</p>
<p>Our contractor originally installed some little conditioner called the “Water Boss”. Boss of what? We filled the tub and it looked as if we had poured it full of Mountain Dew. Ewwww.</p>
<p>I have also heard excellent things about Kinnetico’s.</p>
<p>Buy a new one. We disconnected our 10 month old water softener & now use magnets.</p>