Best RV Water Softeners

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Grain capacity tells you how much hardness a softener removes before it needs regenerating, and 16,000 grains is the standard size in the portable RV class. Turning that into useful terms takes one calculation: multiply your water hardness in grains per gallon by the gallons you use, and when the product reaches capacity the resin is spent. At 10 grains per gallon, a 16,000 grain unit handles about 1,600 gallons, which is a couple of weeks for two people showering and washing dishes; at 25 grains per gallon in the hard-water Southwest it is closer to 600 gallons. That is the whole argument for the double-resin versions, which simply hold more resin and go longer between cycles. Fittings are the second thing to check and the most common failure point. Three-quarter inch brass connections thread onto a standard garden hose and survive being cross-threaded in the dark; plastic fittings crack, and a cracked inlet on a pressurized line is a wet-bay flood. Regeneration is the routine you are signing up for: portable units are recharged with two boxes of table salt and a rinse, and the process takes roughly twenty to thirty minutes, so a wide fill opening and a clear procedure matter more than any spec. Flow rate limits shower pressure, so check it if two fixtures run at once. A bundled carbon filter addresses taste and chlorine, which softening does not.