Need help choosing a softener!

I live in Texas on a well and I need a water softener. I moved to this house and it just had a well. Three people live in this house with the occasional visitor. We use a fair amount of water. I have all new appliances and I am waiting to get new faucets in the bathroom and hook up the dishwasher and icemaker until I get this iron and hardwater problem resolved. I have a ro I need to install. I have had my water tested by the culligan man. He said I had high Iron , low dissolved solids, and my hardness was 11. He recommended a softener , ro and some chlorinator thingee that used clorox. I have growth in my commode after awhile and I have some gas in my water that makes it have a rotten egg smell (manganese?). I would like a better test but dont know where to get it. I was looking at doing this myself to save money and stay away from the high pressure who knows what they are selling me sellers. I have studied up online and I am kinda confused. Like for instance resin, the fine resin helps with removing rust better but clogs up and impedes flow faster so no one really recommends it from what I have read. I understand the water softener will take some iron out but I was wanting to remove it the best I can. I have seen mixed results about birm filters and chlorinators. I was going to instal an inline tablet chlorinator and then carbon filter it out before the water softener. Then I read some backwash filter is better because the carbon filter would need to be replaced often and expensive. I was leaning toward a clack but cant buy them online. I am also replacing my bladder tank on my well with an galvanized one. Hopefully this will help the rotten egg smell because the water comes in contact with air.

So I was looking to have my well pump water to a sediment filter, then through a tablet chlorinator, then some filter than will remove the iron and rotten egg stuff and chlorine taste, then my expansion tank then the water softener then into the house.

I need help any recommendations? what path u think I should make and cost?

I hope this is not too confusing.

Thanks in advance!

First of all you should find another proffesional to test your water or see if there is a certified lab near you or your local ag college its sounds like the culligan guy had an idea of iron bacteria so this is something you should definetly find out before deciding on your system. Secondly you probably dont have enough flow or pressure to run a setup like your talking about reffer to gary slussers page on several of the other threads to find out the correct sizing for your unit. You should probably give him a shout he has more experience with well chlorinators than i. Your rotten egg smell is h2s by the way.

With chlorine you don't want a prefilter and, it oxidizes iron, manganese and H2S and kills all types of bacteria if any. Centaur carbon in a backwashed filter removes rust and other particulates formed by the oxidation and then the chlorine.

So the softener only sees the hardness.

THanks for the info. Where is the best place to buy a clack water softener? THe 48,000 clack on Garys site was 688. I found one guy selling the same setup for 900 something. Is this a good buy or keep searching?

What part of Texas?

High iron does not say much, other than some one not knowing how to find that number.

High hardness like what you have will make 2ppm of iron look like 12ppm,,

1.5 cubic foot system,,, depending on which fleck control should be in 1k range ,,, plus or minus... I would use standard resin.

900 is probably the best your gonna do on a Clack due to the fact that 688 like Gary was able to sell is very close to cost on a unit like that for most independant dealers. I would make sure that all the bells and whistles are there before you purchase the unit. Sometimes a good deal is really something parted together. You should always do some foot work on your dealer ask them if they have references from other customers and check out their BBB rating. Also as in the above post high iron says very little. Where I work 50 and above hardness is common on even municipal water supplies but there is very seldom any iron so saying high anything is relative to your area. When you have a water tech come to your home make sure they give you exact numbers this is a sign of proffesionalism if they don't that is usually a sign you don't want to deal with them.