This is the best and most affordable water softner on the market. This unit will far outlast most appliances if installed and cared for properly.

Mechanical controls last longer than circuit boards.

It's a simple 3 step, 2 hour process, of back wash, salt rinse and salt refill. You should only regenerate when water is not being used.

A 48,000 grain unit should be set for around 1000 gallons per regen. Based on average of 25 hardness and 2 parts iron.

DO NOT USE PELLET SALT. Use crystal, solar or other fine granular salt so it will devolve properly and not cake up your salt tank.

Hard or Soft water is not drinking water its about the same as a puddle in your yard. Water must be purified with reverse osmosis systems in order to remove the dissolved solids and be considered healthy water.

The actual instal was easy. I had to do a great deal of soldering and adding pipes but if I had a pre plumbed setup like most people have it would literally only have taken less than an hour to install. It does it's job fine but I hate the taste and feel of softened water so the flavor rating is only because it tastes as it's supposed to. This was a $1900 savings over getting a local business to install their equipment. Great deal if you have skills.

The unit was easy to put together. YouTube video from APlus was very helpful. I replaced a Culligan Mark 100, and saved a lot of money with the 5600 Econominder. I had to have a plumber reorient my pipes. Old setup did not have enough room on copper pipe to use Sharkbites. I had a question on install and setting the meter. APlus got back to me quickly and I completed setup of unit. Would have given 5 stars if setting the meter had been easier. But overall very satisfied with this softener. I have soft water again!

Excellent performance. At first there were two weeks that my water didn't get soft. I thought it was something bad with the softener. The problem was the valves come set to bypass the softener. So after I fixed that, I was able to get great soft water for about a month (this is a house we hadn't lived in full-time so the settings were different). After moving in full-time, I did not change the settings but the water got hard again. I contacted the seller through Amazon and he called me and walked me through the steps to get it right. As it turned out, I simply forgot to adjust settings after moving into the house full-time. The seller even sends you links to YouTube videos on how to do everything.

Not only would I recommend this seller and product, but I am recommending this softener (and seller) to my parents. I'm very pleased.

My pre-install water hardness went from 20+ to 0 after install. We live in Nebraska, for reference sake, I guess? It went super smooth and I'm not a plumber. Watch videos on YouTube, plan it out and you'll be just fine. *This review is coming from a scatterbrain who over-researches(if that's a thing) and still will make 13 trips to home depot anyway. To be fair, I was running new water lines throughput the 100 year old house at the same time. If you're looking at this softener, BUY IT! :)
I'm very happy with this water softener