Water Softener Salt Hopper (Chute) Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought a Norman Products Salt Hopper direct from the inventor/manufacturer about a year ago. I saw it at a parade of homes in Janesville, WI. This thing is awesome. It works just like a laundry chute. You set it up in your garage with piping (that you have to provide) that feeds directly into your water softener's brine tank. Let me just say that I was so sick of carrying 50 lb bags of salt from my car into my basement that $200 was worth it. I installed it myself. Unfortunately for me, my house configuration has about 3 steps up from the basement to the 1st floor, which means to pipe this down into the basement I actually had to drill through concrete. It ended up costing about $90 & 3 hours of my time to install (half of that time was spent drilling through my concrete wall). I rented a hammer drill and bit from my local True Value store for ~$60 and had to buy a couple of pieces of pipe and a Fernco cuff (per instructions that come in the box) for the other $30.
The Norman Products website says that you can move your brine tank away from your water softener system by just extending the plastic tube. I can confirm this is the case as I ended up moving my brine tank around a corner ~20 feet from its original spot so that I could have the pipe run direct from where I went through the wall into the brine tank...worked great.
All my neighbors are jealous that I can now just back into my garage, pop open the trunk, and dump the bags of salt right into my salt hopper. This is a convenience for me now...but as I get older, I think this could save me from a tumble or two down the stairs. In fact, I liked this so much, and realized the safety factor for older individuals that I just recently bought one for my dad's birthday. Note - it was MUCH easier to install in his house because we were able to go directly through the subfloor (from garage to basement) rather than having to cut through any concrete.
If you're handy, you can definitely install this yourself. If not, I would recommend you hire a local handyman to take care of it. I can't imaging that they'd charge more than $100 - $200. If you have to go through a concrete wall...it will take some elbow grease :)
I definitely recommend this product. Enjoy.

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