Professional Water Softeners in Cary, NC

Yes, Apex has hard water. Wake County municipal water measures between 3 and 7 grains per gallon, which puts it in the moderately hard category. That's enough to leave white, chalky scale on faucets and showerheads, create spots on dishes and glass shower doors, make soap and shampoo lather poorly, and slowly damage your water heater and appliances from the inside. If you're seeing any of those signs, you don't need a test to know. You need a softener.

But if you want to be sure, here's how to tell. Look at your faucet aerators. Unscrew the tip of your kitchen faucet and check the screen. White or tan mineral buildup caked on the screen is calcium and magnesium, the minerals that make water hard. Check your showerhead too. If the spray pattern is uneven because mineral deposits are blocking some of the holes, that's hard water. Look inside your dishwasher. If the interior has a white film or your glasses come out cloudy despite using rinse aid, hard water is the reason.

Element Service Group offers a free water quality test that measures hardness along with other factors. No charge, no obligation. We'll tell you exactly what your water numbers look like and whether a softener makes sense for your home.

What Hard Water Actually Does to Your Home

The visible effects (scale, spots, dry skin) are annoying. The invisible effects cost real money.

Water heater damage. Mineral scale builds up on the heating elements in electric heaters and on the heat exchanger in gas models. The Department of Energy estimates that hard water reduces water heater efficiency by 20-30%. A heater working 25% harder uses 25% more energy, and it wears out years earlier. In our area, we regularly pull water heater elements that are coated in a quarter-inch of calcium. Those heaters were laboring to heat water through a layer of rock.

Appliance lifespan. Dishwashers, washing machines, and ice makers all have small water valves and internal components that scale up over time. Hard water shortens the life of every water-using appliance in your home by several years.

Pipe scale buildup. Over decades, hard water deposits narrow the inside diameter of your pipes. This is especially true in older galvanized and copper systems. Reduced pipe diameter means reduced water pressure and increased strain on your plumbing system.

Higher soap and detergent use. Hard water doesn't lather well. Most people compensate by using more soap, more shampoo, more laundry detergent. A softener can cut your detergent use by 50% or more while producing cleaner results.

How Water Softeners Work

A water softener uses ion exchange to swap calcium and magnesium ions (the hardness minerals) for sodium or potassium ions. Water flows through a tank filled with resin beads that attract and hold the hardness minerals. Periodically, the system regenerates by flushing the resin with a salt solution that washes the captured minerals down the drain and recharges the beads.

That's the basic process. The difference between a good softener and a bad one comes down to how efficiently it regenerates, how much salt and water it uses, and how well the control valve manages the timing. Modern demand-initiated softeners regenerate based on actual water usage instead of a fixed timer, which uses significantly less salt and water than older models.

Sizing and Selection

Softeners are sized by grain capacity, which determines how much hardness the system can remove between regeneration cycles. A system that's too small regenerates too often, wasting salt and water. A system that's too large wastes money upfront and still uses more salt than necessary per cycle.

For a typical Triangle home (3-4 people, Wake County municipal water at 4-6 grains per gallon), a 32,000-48,000 grain system is usually the right fit. For larger homes, higher hardness levels, or homes on well water with 8-12+ grains per gallon (common in western Wake County), we size up accordingly.

Our free water quality test gives us the exact hardness number and water usage data we need to recommend the right size. We don't guess and we don't oversize to pad the invoice.

What It Costs

A quality water softener installed in a Triangle home typically runs $1,500-$3,500 depending on the system capacity, features, and your home's plumbing layout. Salt-based systems are the most effective and most common. Salt-free "conditioners" are an option for people who can't or won't use salt, but they don't actually remove hardness minerals. They change the mineral structure to reduce scale formation. We explain the tradeoffs and let you decide.

Ongoing cost is salt, about $5-$10 per month for a standard household. That's it. Quality softener resin lasts 10-15+ years before needing replacement, and the systems themselves often last 15-20 years with minimal maintenance.

Compare that to the cost of replacing a water heater early ($1,500-$4,000), replacing scaled-up appliances, and the extra energy your hard-working heater burns every month. The softener pays for itself.

Installation

We install the softener on your main water line, after the shutoff but before the water heater and the rest of your plumbing. A bypass valve lets you isolate the system for maintenance. The drain line from the regeneration process routes to an appropriate drain per NC plumbing code. Most installations take half a day and don't require any drywall work.

If you also have water quality concerns beyond hardness (chloramine, PFAS, sediment), we can pair the softener with a whole-home carbon filter or under-sink RO system. Many of our Triangle customers choose a combined approach: softener for the whole house plus RO at the kitchen sink for drinking water.

Element Service Group is veteran-owned with over 700 five-star reviews. We test your water, size the system correctly, install it to code, and make sure you understand how to maintain it. Protect your pipes, your appliances, and your water heater from Wake County hard water.