Welcome to CAI Technologies Water Systems Division online store.  Established in 1991, CAI offers high-end water softener systems, using superior components from leading manufacturers.  With a nationwide distribution network, we provide the highest quality systems available, while still maintaining a low sales price.  CAI water softeners are not entry level, and our product pricing reflects that.  You can find lower cost, but not higher quality.  Water softeners that look very similar in design are sold on the internet within a wide price range – but be cautious – not everything is as it appears.  What should you look for when selecting a water softener?  Some of the important points to consider are below:

Water Softener Controls
CAI uses controls made only by major manufacturers like Fleck, GE/Autotrol, and Clack Corporation.  These controls all come with 5-year warranties, and have demonstrated years of superior performance in the field.   Durable enough for outdoor installation, designed for high flow and low pressure drop, these controls are a water treatment professional’s first choice.  We inventory a wide range of water treatment control valves, from residential, to larger commercial/industrial controls.  If you have an interest in a specific control that you don’t see on our site, just let us know, it’s likely that we have it on-hand.

Always select a unit that matches your water supply pipe diameter to maximize household water flow and minimize pressure drop.  In most cases this is either 3/4 or 1 inch.  The water supply pipe you need to measure is the one that comes into your home.  In the case of municipal (city) water supply, this is the pipe immediately after your water meter.  If you are using an on-site private well, the pipe is the one immediately after your pressure tank.  There is no reason to consider a larger 1" sized control if your pipe is 3/4" in diameter – it only costs more and provides you with no real benefit. However, if you have 1" or 1 1/4" pipe - get a 1" or 1 1/4 inch system.

Water Softener Tanks
CAI tanks are supplied by major companies, like Structural Fibers Corporation (a division of Fleck), GE Water Division, Clack Corporation, and Enpress Corporation.  While there are lower quality tanks available, we choose not to offer them.  The security in knowing that your CAI water softener will provide you with many years of service, with no leaks due to defective tanks, provides our customers with peace-of-mind, and reflects well on our product quality. Brine (salt) tanks are round, heavy walled, and complete with salt platforms (grids), back-up float check valves, and safety overflow drains.  We don’t use cheap “garbage can” square brine tanks in our design.

Water Softener Cation Exchange Resin
Lower end products can normally be identified when you find an ambiguous reference to the product components.  Statements like “contains high capacity resin” are an example.  High capacity seems to indicate that it’s a premium product, but in reality all cation exchange resin commonly available for residential water softening is “high capacity”; both generic and premium grades, and remanufactured resins as well.  CAI clearly advertises the brands we use, like Lewatit/Sybron C-249, a premium water softening resin used by most major manufacturers that is resistant to chlorine attack and loss of activity due to iron and manganese contamination.  The resin has a more uniform particle size than many competing brands, resulting in a lower pressure drop, and providing many years of proven performance.  Using premium resins costs more – substantial savings can be realized using generic resins – but this results in poor long term performance.  If a company you are evaluating provides high quality resin in their water softeners, be assured, they will make this well known. 

Other Water Softener Components
CAI systems come with by-pass valve (used to take the system out of service if needed), correctly designed backwash flow controls, and high quality - high flow - turbulators or risers.  48,000 grain capacity systems and smaller are all equipped with a turbulator at no additional charge.  A turbulator functions to physically move the water softener resin around the bed during regeneration. This serves to keep the bed clean, and free of any channeling.  Water softeners in 64,000 grain capacity (and larger) are equipped with high flow risers and gravel underbeds.  Turbulators do not perform at peak efficiency when used in the larger diameter 64,000 grain system tanks.  Turbulators do not use gravel underbeds, but anytime you are considering the purchase of a system using a standard riser, always be sure it’s supplied with gravel.  Gravel is very important for proper distribution of flow throughout the resin bed.

Salt Free Water Conditioners
Not much to say here, other than we do not offer this equipment.  There are only 4 practical ways that we are aware of to soften water:

1. Traditional salt-based ion exchange water softeners (sodium & potassium chloride).
2. Deionization systems.  These systems use caustic soda (sodium hydroxide), a s a regenerate, and it is not practical to use this hazardous material in a residential application.
3. Reverse osmosis.  High quality water, but expensive and maintenance intensive.  Normally only used in whole-house applications when no other option is available, for instance, extremely high water hardness, or in a remote island location when only salt water is available.
4. Distillation.  This makes a very high quality water, but normally not used in whole-house applications, as it is very energy intensive.  Used commonly for high purity drinking water systems.

Given our present day understanding of chemistry and electromagnetic fields, the claims made by many of the purveyors of “salt-free” water softeners do not seem to add up.  References to obscure literature seem to indicate that these systems function, but not to remove the hardness (as traditional ion-exchange systems do), only to “reorient the hardness molecules” or to “precipitate the scale” in a form that will not deposit on piping and fixtures.  It seems unlikely that a magnet powered with only 110 volts  has the power to do this.  Particle accelerators/colliders do manipulate molecules and subatomic particles -  but many of these use dedicated power plants – most homeowners do not have these facilities readily available in the back yard.   Regarding catalytic water softeners, we would hope that if there was a good way to soften water using this method, our Catalyst Products Division would have told us about it.

Obviously, we are being a little “tongue-in cheek” here, maybe these devises work – maybe they don’t – we have simply never seen any demonstrated functional evidence, and so we choose not to offer these products.