On Jan 10, 1:51*pm, Mark Thorson > wrote:
> I'm watching Ask This Old House, and they're replacing
> a water softener. *Actually, they're using the old tank
> but replacing the head and the resin beads. *As they were
> dumping out the old beads, there was all this black muck
> at the bottom of the tank. *They didn't comment on that.
> I'd hate to think of my drinking water passing through
> that crap.
>
> When I was a kid, a friend of mine across the street
> had a water softener at his house. *I always thought
> the water tasted terrible over there. *Borderline
> undrinkable.

You're not supposed to drink soft water - usually, the setup excludes
the kitchen/cold water from the soft water system. Soft water is best
for laundry, bathing, washing hair, etc. Drinking it is not the
recommended usage - I never use anything but kitchen/cold in my
cooking, either. I have to have a separate softener because the water
in my area is so hard.

N.