Whirlpool Water Softener Reviews (Updated 2021)

How to Pick the Perfect One for Your Needs

The most important considerations for choosing a unit are how hard your water is and how much water you use at peak times during the day and in total over the course of the day.

These two factors will determine how economical a water softener will be in your situation. You’ll also have to decide if you would rather invest in a more expensive model in order to save money on salt and water over the life of the softener or if you need to buy a less expensive model to meet your present needs.

1. Decide on the grain rating

When it comes to grain rating, you first have to determine how hard your water is. That is something you can find out easily with a water test kit. It will help you measure hardness in terms of the number of grains of minerals that are in each gallon of your water.

We derive many health benefits from mineral grains. While they might be a regular feature of our diet, they have no business obstructing the flow of water in your pipes or forming colored spots on your drying dishes.

All water softeners, like all salt-using softeners, are rated based on regeneration cycles and how many grains of minerals can be filtered out of your water between such cycles. Salt-using types give us a good idea about what a regeneration cycle is.

They have help from control valves. That is certainly the case with grain types. When said valves calculate that the resin tank has reached its filtering capacity using your water usage and the hardness of your water, they trigger the next step in the process.

That entails emptying the resin tank and pumping salt water into it. Why? Because salt water is needed to remove the mineral grains and carry them down the drain. Following that, fresh water rinses the remaining salt out of the resin tank.

Regeneration Cycles

We earlier alluded to regeneration cycles. That is the term used to describe the entire process from when the resin tank is emptied to when the salt is rinsed out. After that happens, the resin keeps filtering out hard water grains, and the control valve resets its count.

Grain capacity influences regeneration cycles. Softeners run longer between such cycles if the capacity of the resin tank is higher. Furthermore, if you see fewer regeneration cycles, you are bound to spend less on water and salt.

Grain rating calculation

We can get the sense of how grain capacity can affect usage by considering what will happen if, for example, a family of four uses well water and a similar-sized family uses city water.

If a person in either household uses 80 gallons on the average, a family of four would typically use 320 gallons per day for all of their needs: watering the lawn, laundry, bathing, dishes, cooking, and drinking.

In general, the grain count delivered by city pipe-borne water and other systems when evaluated using GPG is a hardness of 15 grains per gallon on the average.

When it comes to families using well water, that figure is generally higher at approximately 40 grains per gallon. That is the national average, so variations do occur depending on the soil of the area.

If both families used a Whirlpool model with a capacity of 44,000 grains, the family with well water would trigger a regeneration cycle every 3.44 days. The family with city water would see a longer cycle: every 9.17 days. If they were each using an 80,000 grain, regeneration would only occur every 6.25 days and 16.7 days, respectively.

A higher grain rating can dramatically reduce regeneration cycles, conserving salt and water used for regeneration.

2. Determine the flow rate

Another rating you should get acquainted with is the flow rate of Whirlpool units - how many gallons of water it can supply per minute. It causes the water coming from your supply line to slow down as it enters it, giving it time to filter the water. So, you could liken this product to a smaller section of pipe that the water needs to feed through.

You won’t be able to judge a product's flow rate properly without knowing just how many gallons of water you need during peak periods of the day.

Think about our family of four again. If it had a husband, wife, and two teenagers who needed to get ready in the morning that would make for four people looking to use the water at the same time.

Two people might be taking a shower (2 gallons per minute each) while one begins doing the laundry (1.5 gallons per minute) and the fourth person could be making breakfast at the kitchen sink (1 gallon per minute). The family would need a minimum flow rate during that time of approximately 7 gallons per minute.

If, for some reason, the flow rate was less than 7 gallons per minute, all four of them would notice a reduction in water pressure as their various faucets, fixtures, and appliances delivered less water than normal.

Of course, you won’t want to be so conservative if you have a pool or Jacuzzi or if water your lawn regularly. Your flow rate requirements would certainly be higher if that were the case.

3. Know how hard your water is

Water softeners are specially designed to condition water appropriately.

That is why, if, for instance, our imaginary family observed that hair and skin dryness was becoming an issue, they would want to buy a water filtering system that removed chlorine. It is common knowledge that chlorine and chloramines are indispensable for water treatment, but once the water gets to your faucets and other installations, they are no longer needed.

Our imaginary family using well water might eventually notice orange stains in their shower from iron or black stains from manganese. The presence of sulfur might lead to the water smelling like boiled eggs. They would want to get a water softener or filter to remove these elements.

Additionally, if they tested the water, and they saw an abundance of pesticides, nitrates, bacteria strains, or herbicides moving through the groundwater into their well, they would need a water filter, not a softener only. 

The majority of products on the market only soften water, filtering calcium and magnesium. So, to take care of any extra situations, additional filters would either have to be added into the tank or added separately before or after them in the supply line. Chlorine, for instance, negatively affects the resin in a unit’s tank and so a chlorine filter before the tank would make a lot of sense.