1) Are you doing potassium or sodium? The potassium is predicted to be more expensive but is better for the environment.
2) Have you discussed with a plumber what effect this may have on your other metal surfaces of your plumbing? While this does prevent scaling and the annoying hard water stains on your countertops, I was advised by a good plumber who had experience with both installing and servicing systems with water softeners. He said the added soluble ions tend to increase the rate of corrosion of metal parts of things like water heaters, plumbing joints, appliances… This makes sense to me as a chemist — you lose the “protective” layer of scaling that happens with some hardness in the water, and the increased ionic strength may increase the corrosiveness of the water for any cheap metal parts of your systems which may then spring leaks.
In the end I opted not to do water softening and just clean more often…
