A useful quote names the control valve, resin volume, tank size, regeneration style, service flow, warranty split (valve vs resin vs labor), and the drain — if those lines are missing, you are buying a presentation, not a specification.
Guides
These are the long answers. If we could not check a number, it is not here.
Use a laboratory certified by your state for drinking-water methods; treat door-to-door vials and soap-cloud demos as presentations, not as analytical results.
If the well stains fixtures or smells like rotten eggs, size an oxidizer and iron/sulfur filter first; a softener can polish leftover ferrous iron and hardness only after that bed is working.
A PFAS-capable drinking-water product is one whose exact model is listed by an ANSI-accredited certifier for PFAS reduction under NSF/ANSI 53 (carbon or similar) or NSF/ANSI 58 (reverse osmosis); a generic 42 or 53 badge, a pitcher story, or a whole-house taste-and-odor tank is not that listing.
Phoenix city water is hard to very hard (10–17.6 gpg in the 2025 Water Quality Report); size capacity from grains per day and size the valve/resin bed from peak gallons per minute, not from a bathroom-count slogan.
A salt-free conditioner is a scale-behavior device; it is not a water softener, it does not change a grains-per-gallon test, and it will not give you the slick feel or detergent performance of ion exchange.
In the Santa Clarita Valley, Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts prohibit automatic salt-based softeners that send brine to the sewer; portable-exchange tanks that discharge no brine on site are the exception written into Santa Clarita’s plumbing code — and none of this is a statewide ban.
If a certified lab shows well pH below the EPA secondary range of 6.5–8.5 — or the plumbing is already staining blue-green or metallic — raise pH with a properly sized neutralizer before the softener, not after.
Whole-house activated carbon is for disinfectant taste and odor (NSF/ANSI 42 claims, and a separate chloramine claim if the water is chloraminated); it does not soften, and it is not a PFAS or lead device unless the exact model is listed for that claim.
Plan on salt (if you have a regenerating softener) and prefilter changes in year 1; carbon, calcite, RO cartridges, and iron media are replaced when the manufacturer’s capacity or a measured breakthrough says so — not because a brochure says 'year one.'