About SoftenerCheck

SoftenerCheck is an independent reference for diagnosing, configuring and sizing residential water softeners. It exists to get you from a vague symptom to a specific, safe check — showing the source behind every technical number rather than asking you to take it on trust.

What this site is

A small set of tools and guides, built around three ideas:

Show the arithmetic. Both calculators display the formula, the constants they used, and where each constant was published. You can check any result by hand.
Keep manufacturers separate. Whirlpool tells you to add 5 to the hardness number per ppm of iron. Pentair sizes on 4 gpg per ppm. Those are different companies answering different questions, and merging them would produce a number nobody published. The tools keep them apart and say so.
Say where the DIY line falls. Checking a bypass handle and reading a meter display are homeowner tasks. Replacing a rotor and seal on a pressurised valve is not. Every guide marks the transition.

What this site is not

Not a manufacturer, installer, laboratory or plumbing service. We are not affiliated with any brand mentioned. Brand and model names appear only to identify which equipment a document applies to.
Not a source of drinking water safety advice. A softener addresses hardness. It is not disinfection and not contaminant removal. Questions about whether water is safe to drink belong with your utility, a certified laboratory, or your local health authority.
Not a shop, and not a review site. There are no product ratings, no rankings, no affiliate links and no testimonials here — see the advertising disclosure.
Not a parts catalogue. We publish no part numbers and no compatibility claims, because a wrong part on a water line is a leak.

Note Who writes this, honestly stated

SoftenerCheck is published as an organisation, not under a personal byline. There is no licensed plumber on staff, no laboratory, and no hands-on product testing programme — and we are not going to invent one.

What we do have is a documented research process: locate the manufacturer's own document, record what it actually says and exactly which models it covers, and publish only what can be traced back to it. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement instead of picking a winner. Read the editorial policy for how that works in practice.

If that changes — if professional review is commissioned later — the name and credentials will appear here with the reviewer's consent, and not before.

What is here today

This is the first published set of pages, not a finished site. As of September 3, 2026 it contains:

two calculators — sizing and grain capacity and hardness settings — whose formulas are covered by automated tests;
a symptom-led diagnosis flow with seven ordered checks, each stating what its answer does and does not establish;
three detailed symptom guides: not regenerating, not using salt, and water in the brine tank;
an index of 27 official manuals across 9 brands, all on manufacturer-owned domains;
an internal ledger of 100 recorded claims, each tied to the document it came from — visible on the sources and corrections page.

Guides on drain lines, bypass valves, resin replacement and individual brands are researched but not published. They stay unpublished until they meet the same standard as the pages above. A thin page on a topic is not better than no page.

How it is funded

SoftenerCheck currently earns nothing. There is no advertising running on it today, no affiliate programme and no sponsored content. If that changes, it will be disclosed on the advertising disclosure page before it happens, and the privacy and cookie policies will be updated to match.

Corrections

Found an outdated manual or a technical error? We treat that as important, not as a nuisance — manufacturers reorganise their documentation constantly and a link that worked in September may not work in March. Here is how to reach us.