Question:
Some friends of mine have been convinced to put in magnets on their water lines as a means of purifying the water. They live in a high contamination area and were told these magnets would do the trick. I told them I could not see how magnets would purify water.

secondly, if they don't put in the magnets, they want to put in a whole house water softner system, on both the hot and cold water. This means they will be drinking soft water, and although I asked them to use potassium chloride vice sodium chloride, I remember that I was told it was bad to drink soft water.

Answer: Only if there is particulate iron in the water (which I'm not sure is possible since the iron would oxidize). Iron in the water is removed by one of two methods, air entrainment or a manganese greensand filter. The first also removes free sulphur, but the second is cheaper.

If the water is hard, the use of a whole-house softener will be good for lots of reasons. Hard water does not dissolve soap well, and leaves soap curds on your skin that will dry it out. The "squeaky clean" feel of hard water is actually those soap curds--truly rinsed skin has a smooth feel.

Whether you need softening depends on how hard the water is. Hardness is measured in grains, and there are kits available for ten bucks or so at Home Depot that will tell you the grains of hardness in the water, and with that you can review the specs of whole-house softeners.

Our well water has a high iron content in addition to being acidic and somewhat hard. We first neutralize the acidity by running it through an acid neutralizer filter. Then, we run it through a manganese greensand filter, then through a mid-size GE water softener, and finally through a large activated charcoal filter (to improve the taste). By "large" I mean tanks 6 or 8 inches in diameter and five feet tall. I have 20 square feet devoted to water treatment in my basement, and the regeneration cycles require a fairly complex timing arrangement to keep them from regenerating on top of each other (which would exceed the well pump capacity).