kenmore worth a darn?

I have moved into two homes in the last decade and put kenmore water systems in them. The first was for a small two bedroom house, the second was for my family home. I bought the best model offered.

My gripe is that there seems to be a noticeable honeymoon period with these. Then its like after 6 months the resin tanks go bad or become less effective. I have cleaned valves, done iron out, etc, (city water, irons not really a prob, but you never know), but water just seems to feel hard.

42,300 max grains. Water is around 17-19 gpm (or so). While it is much better than untreated for buildup, we still have hardness deposits on water dispensers, etc.

It does seem to do a nightly recharge, so perhaps we are using more than its capable of. However, way back when it seemed we did one recharge every 3-4 nights, now its nightly.



Is this thing just a piece of crap? Setting hardness from 10-25 doesnt change water it seems. Have to do more tests, and hate dealing with sears salesmen. They want to resell me a softener even though i just got from them, so stopped going.


Suggestions?

Welcome to the world of cheep from Corp America..
Where valves are always undergoing a change of some type.

Sears and the ones just like them really love the upper basket, now it does have it's place but more times than not it is a problem in how well the system will clean.
Plus it is a reason for a prefilter on their systems, to keep stuff out of that upper basket from getting there in the first place.