Water Softener- Expected PPM

[MTech8]

I recently bought a TDS meter to see how much minerals are in my water.

The readings I get is in the low 200s.

I recently installed a water softener. To my surprise when I used the meter to measure the PPM in the hard water (from main before it goes through the softener) and softened water. Both come back with low 200 PPM numbers. I contacted the sales rep who sold me the softener and asked him about it. He mentioned that the reason why the PPM's are similar is that the the softened water uses salt brine which removes the hardness, but may leave some minerals/sodium in the softened water. Thus PPM isn't a good indication of whether water is truly soft. He recommended I get soft water test strips to test instead.

Is what the sales rep saying accurate? For those that use water softeners, what PPM do you typically get?

 

[havasu]

I would agree with what you were told. Unless you filter out the minerals with filters or a reverse osmosis system, your TDS would remain the same. You are lucky, my TDS is 550 ppm before going through my R/O system, and comes out at 50 ppm of TDS's.