I just bought a new house that has a well (we closed Friday -- everything
went wrong, but the land is beautiful, with wild dogwoods in bloom, which
makes up for all the financial problems -- anyway this is off-topic.)  The
well water is hard and also has 2 ppb of Fe.  The previous owner used a
water softener.
Putting sodium chloride in the water to ionize magnesium and calcium seems
awful to me -- that's what water softeners do.

I'm wondering whether the minerals in the well water might actually be
healthy to drink, and if they are absorbed in the body (actually, I wonder
whether they might even be similar to the colloidal minerals that are such a
rage these days).

If hard water is healthy /not healthy for humans, are there any other
environmentally safe and health conscious solutions to protect the life of
appliances?  Hope to hear something soon.  Am supposed to meet these water
softener salemen Friday afternoon but I'm now thinking of cancelling, as my
instinct tells me I don't want to go with this solution.

Janis ([log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask])