The principle behind a classic water softener seems pretty simple. I don't even think one has moving parts. I've never owned one myself so I may be missing a concept or two. Basically a big plastic tank is filled with salt chunks. After being filtered for particulates, hard water from your well, cistern or water supply enters this tank. Here the water sits until called for by a faucet or a toilet flush. The salt reacts in some way with the dissolved calcium in the water. The excess calcium vanishes somehow and water leaving the tank is "softer" than when it went in. I'm not sure bit I might remember the water softener going through some sort of flush cycle to waste as a timed event every so often. I would not be surprised if that is the case, but I'm just not sure.
There may be some shut off valves involved but I don't think there are any unit specific pumps or complicated electronics.
I haven't personally seen big bags of rock salt at any store I frequent in and around Sosua. I do remember from my Mother's system, that she always had a stack of salt bags near her softener and she needed to add more salt as it was dissolved by the water over time. She always had quite a few bags of salt because new salt needed to be put in the softer at fairly frequent/regular intervals.
In the end, I could only envision having to hire a truck to deliver a pallet or two of salt form some far away city. Where would I store all of this humidity sensitive salt? How long could I store it? How many times would I have to arrange delivery?
In the end, I just accepted that it was all too much for me to deal with or obsess over. I only occasionally think about soft water now. Like the heat here that makes me sweat, I accept that I will not be able to change the reality of my hard water in the absence of a really compelling reason to do so.
