Review on AO Smith Whole Salt Free Descaler by Marco Gavi

I just bought a descaler to see if it works without buying the rest of the system. We have very hard water with a pH of 8.2. We live in Florida in a brand new house. The instructions also recommend purchasing a pre-filter from the same company at Lowes. Search the web for instructions in PDF format, so you can see what I mean, search the web for the ao-wh-dsclr_ownersmanual.pdf file. Had I known I would have bought a pre-filter as well, but I didn't install a pre-filter and figured I could install one later if I felt I still needed it. It was just a test to see if it works or not. and now that it's installed and I've tested it. I can go back and set a pre-filter to see if I get 100% with no watermark instead of 90%. First impression after installation: PROS • Water feels GREAT! My son has sensitive skin and has noticed that after a shower his skin feels better and he is no longer itchy. Big! it solved my son's skin problems. • The rinse on my crystal glasses shines like never before • The water is odorless • The pH of the water has dropped from 8 to 7. My aquarium fish like a lower pH and I've tried lowering the pH with chemicals or reverse osmosis for a long time, but neither worked in the long run). I was hoping that the descaler would reset the pH and it worked. My fish are happier and yes I do notice when my kids are happier. CONS • Difficult to install if you have yellow pipes instead of white PVC pipes • Water tastes funny - we don't care as we don't drink tap water and only drink bottled water. • Not a 100% cure for hard water and scale, but approximately 90% effective. Good for the price at the moment. Does not remove water stains 100%. If water lingers on granite for too long, it still dries up with minimal water rings. Maybe nothing will cure water spots and rings, or maybe a complete expensive system will cure water spots and rings 100%. idk Installation wasn't easy. We had to set up pipes with bends and two types of pipe sizes. Our home was built with yellow/cream colored piping, which retains heat better than white PVC piping. The problem was that our builder placed the built in pipes for the water softener near the bottom and we had to adjust them to go up and then into the tank. It was a mystery to figure out lol! Even though the yellow and white whistles are the same size, they don't match and aren't true to size, it was so frustrating and it took a lot of trial and error buying all kinds of whistles before we figured out what would fit like it goes. Directions are very vague and terrible! There is no help for figuring out what type of glue to use or how to attach the yellow pipes to the tank. Also, yellow tubes use a different glue than white tubes. If you have yellow whistles, you need to make sure the glue you buy is suitable for both whistles, otherwise it won't stick the whistles together.