Best City Water Softener: Buying Guide

A review of the top products for city water. You can choose from the SpringWell FutureSoft, Fleck 5600 SXT, Aquasana Whole House, or Waterboss 950 based on their features, grain count, the capacity, and regeneration cycles. 

Even city water contains hard water minerals. It also contains chlorine meant to kill bacteria. You can eliminate one or both of these problems with a water softener or whole house filtration system.

Keep reading to see our top softener picks for city water, including what features they offer, how much they cost, and how long they’ll last.

We’ll also offer some insights into what you should look for when choosing a water softener for city water.

Best City Water Softener (Updated 2023)

These softeners are from different brands and offer a wide variety of features. That means they also vary widely in price. Read about each one to find the model best suited to take care of the needs of your home.

The FutureSoft Water Softener uses Template Assisted Crystallization or TAC. It is unlike ordinary salt-based water softeners which remove minerals from hard water through ion exchange. The  FutureSoft system addresses the hard water minerals by crystallizing them so they don’t stick to your faucets, fixtures, shower heads and more.  

SpringWell’s Futuresoft system is saltless, eliminates scale, extends the life of your appliances and makes cleaning easier.

With Springwell’s 6 month satisfaction guarantee and lifetime warranty on all parts and pieces, you’re guaranteed to love the system.  They also give you free shipping and have top notch customer service making the buying and installation process easy.

If you’re looking for a system that addresses the common contaminants found in your city’s water such as chlorine and chloramine, then we recommend Springwell’s Whole House Filtration System with the Futuresoft Salt Free Combo.

It is also very economical as it will need to regenerate less than once a week, even if there are five people in the household. As is the case with other 5600 SXT models, it will measure your water usage in your home and will initiate a regeneration process when needed to refresh the filtering capacity. And it has a flow rate of 12 gallons per minute.

To make it safer, Fleck added a safety float that will prevent overfilling and a drain that will be an additional backup in case of a water mess.

Your city pre-treats your water, cutting hard water grains per gallon by 50%. This model is going to deal with the rest of them.

When you purchase this model, you will also get a five-year warranty for the valve that can last up to 27 years and a ten-year warranty for the tank that can last three times that long.

The LED screen helps you program the Fleck 5600 SXT for your hardness rating. The control head also has a backup memory.

The brine tank can hold more than 250 pounds of salt, so you won’t need to worry about refilling it very often. If you have a very large family, you might need to fill the softener with a bag of salt every six weeks.

The installation process itself is fairly easy and fast. If you have some basic plumbing skills, you will be able to install it yourself in only an hour or two.

The Aquasana Whole House Softener will remove most of the chlorine from your city water while crystalizing grains of minerals so that they can’t bother your clothes, pipes, and body. Chlorine and other chemicals are able to evaporate when you are taking a shower and this can contaminate the air you breathe. This model will also deal with those problems to improve your air quality.

However, it’s worth the money because you won’t have to add salt to your water to control mineral buildup. You won’t even need to plug it in.

This model is guaranteed for 10 years of usage or until 1 million gallons pass through it. It is very good for families of three or four since it has the flow rate of 7 gallons per minute. You will also get the installation kit with the product for 0.75-inch pipe fittings.

If you’re using it for city water, the only maintenance you should need to do is refill it with SimplySoft polyphosphate material every 5-10 years. You’ll know it’s time when you notice your water getting hard again.

The Pelican PSE 1800 Whole House Water Filter & Water Softener is a great choice if you use city water as it has a unique filter that is specifically designed to deal with chlorine and chloramines. Once you remove these elements from your water, you will instantly notice your hair becoming softer and your skin becoming healthier.

You will have to change the filter’s carbon media approximately every five years. When you use this Pelican model, you won’t need to worry about changing the filters or doing any other maintenance other than cleaning the tanks once every five years.

The PSE 1800 model doesn’t use electricity or salt. It also doesn’t require any programming and the installation process is a piece of cake. The filters will change the grains in your hard water into crystals, which will prevent them from bonding to any surfaces.

The warranty on the Pelican PSE 1800 lasts a lifetime. And, yes, that covers all of the components. You will also have a flow rate of 10 gallons per minute, which is enough for large families.

The carbon filter will remove chloramines and chlorine from city water, which will result in healthier skin and hair. The softener’s crosslink resin will protect it from any chlorine that might get through. Both the filter and the softener will be cleaned during the regeneration process.

This Genesis 2 model will work for more than seven days between regeneration processes as it has a filtering capacity of 32,000 grains. You will have a water flow rate of 7.2 gallons per minute, which is enough for a household of four people. However, if you need better flow rate and longer regeneration gaps, you can always buy this model in 40,000 and 48,000 grain sizes.

This model has a very simple design that anyone can install and program, but it comes with the most advanced features. With its locked-in memory feature, you will never have to worry about the time resetting or needing to reprogram it.

It also has a display that will show you the most important information, including the last regeneration date, flow rates, and remaining volumes until the next regeneration process.

When you buy this 32,000 grains model, you will also get 0.75 inch connections and all the other pieces necessary to install the three components of this water softener for city water.

Since this water softener for city water has a 22,000-grain capacity, it is perfect for smaller families or those that don’t consume much water. It’s also an ideal fit if you are looking to put a water softener in your small office. The model has both a sediment and a dirt filter, which is ideal for the capacity and comes in handy if you are using well water but won’t require any maintenance if you’re using city water.

Another great feature that this water softener offers is the charcoal filter.

It will remove the chlorine that is common in city water. If you think that your area’s water has an unpleasant smell because of minerals and salts, this model will effectively remove almost all odors from the water.

Due to its small size, it will also look very elegant once it is installed. The water softener weighs 105 pounds and is 31 inches tall. You will get a 10-year warranty on the WaterBoss #950, which will cover any defects that might show up.

It has an LED display, and it is programmable to fit your needs.

You can buy this small, unique compact water softener and make it an inexpensive, effective, attractive softener for low water needs.