Water in this part of Berkeley County is hard, and Hanahan is one of the places where treating it genuinely pays rather than being a luxury.
What hard water is quietly costing you
Scale builds up inside your water heater, wears out tap and shower cartridges early, leaves spotting on glassware that never quite comes off, and means you get through more detergent than you should. If you are replacing heating elements and cartridges more often than seems reasonable, this is usually why.
Softening and filtering are different jobs
Softening deals with the hardness and the scale it leaves behind. Filtering deals with taste, smell and sediment. Plenty of homes here want softening to protect the plumbing and a small filter at the kitchen tap for drinking water, rather than one expensive system attempting both.
Rusty water is a separate problem
If your water looks orange first thing and clears after running, that is very likely old galvanised pipe inside your own home rather than the supply. A softener will not fix that, and we would rather explain the difference than sell you the wrong thing.
Test before buying anything
Sizing depends on your hardness reading and how much water your household actually uses. Anyone recommending equipment without testing first is working from a price list.