Hague Quality Water International
Here's the thing nobody tells you. Your water almost never has just one problem. There's the hardness, sure, but there's often chlorine too, or a smell, or a stain. Most systems fix one of those and leave the rest. This one was built to handle the whole list, in a single cabinet, packed for your house specifically.
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Why this one exists
Walk into a lot of houses that have "handled their water" and you'll find two things bolted to the garage wall. A softener over here, a separate filter over there, plumbed together like a science project. That's because most equipment does one job. It softens, or it filters, and if you need both you buy both.
The Signature Series was designed to end that. It's a softener and a filter living in one cabinet, and the inside isn't fixed. There's a two or three compartment design, and we load those chambers with whatever your water actually calls for. Hardness, chlorine, iron, a sulfur smell, even nitrates if you're near farmland. It's less like buying an appliance off a shelf and more like us packing a toolbox for your house, then sealing it into one tank.
And here's the part people don't expect from a do-everything system. It's the efficient one. It runs fine mesh resin with beads about 23 percent smaller than standard, and it draws salt and water only when it truly needs them. Hague reports that adds up to using up to 80 percent less time, up to 50 percent less water, and up to 50 percent less salt than a conventional unit. So it does more, and it costs less to run doing it. That's a rare combination, and it's the whole idea behind the name.
How it actually works
Once you get this, the whole decision gets easier, and almost nobody bothers to explain it. So here it is in plain English.
Start with hardness, because that's the one everyone has. Hard water isn't dirty. It's water carrying dissolved calcium and magnesium, picked up from rock on its way to your house. Those minerals are safe to drink. They're just lousy houseguests. The second water heats up or dries, they crash out as limescale, which is the white crust on your showerhead and the film on your glasses.
A softener fixes that through ion exchange, and the coat check is the easiest way to picture it. Inside sits a bed of resin beads, each holding a harmless sodium ion. Hard water flows through, the beads grab the calcium and magnesium and hand back sodium in the swap. Hard goes in, soft comes out. When the beads fill up, the system regenerates, rinsing the hardness down the drain and reloading with fresh sodium. Like wringing out a sponge so it can soak up again.
Now here's where the Signature Series goes further than a plain softener. Filtering is a separate job, and it happens in the other chambers. Softening handles calcium and magnesium. Filtering handles the stuff you can taste, smell, or see, mostly chlorine, iron, sulfur, and sediment. Because this unit has two or three chambers, it can do both at once. Water makes one pass through the whole stack, and comes out the other side softened and filtered together. No second tank, no second appliance, no science project on the wall.
One more thing worth knowing. This is a whole house system installed at the point of entry, where the main line comes in. So every tap downstream gets the treated water, not just the kitchen faucet.
Room by room
Bad water never sends you a bill. It just quietly wears down expensive things while you wonder why the dishes never look clean. Here's where you'll feel the difference.
This is the pricey one. Scale settles on the heating element like a blanket, so the unit burns more energy to hit the same temperature and works harder every day. That rumbling from the garage? Scale on the burner plate. Hard water is why plenty of water heaters die years early, and it quietly ages every appliance the water touches.
Scale builds up inside the dishwasher and washing machine the same way it does on your showerhead, just where you can't see it. Soften the water and detergent finally rinses instead of leaving soap scum, so glassware comes out without spotting and towels feel soft instead of like sandpaper.
This is what the filtering chambers are for, and it's the part a softener alone can't touch. That chlorine tang, that faint pool smell, or on a well that rotten-egg sulfur whiff, all of it gets handled by carbon and the media we pick for your water. You notice this one the first glass you pour.
Hard water stops soap lathering and leaves a film that rinsing never fully clears. That's a big reason skin feels tight or dry after a shower and hair feels squeaky. With softened water you'll reach for noticeably less shampoo and detergent, because what you're using finally works.
The white crust on the showerhead, the ring on the faucet, the rust-colored staining if you've got iron. Different problems, same result, your fixtures looking a decade older than they are. The right chamber mix stops the chore before it starts.
Whatever's crusted on the chrome is also lining the inside of your pipes. Scale narrows them over the years, chipping away at flow and at the efficiency of everything downstream. Nobody notices this one until a plumber is quoting a repipe.
Inside the cabinet
Straight from Hague's own sheet, with a plain note on why each one actually matters once it's bolted into your garage.
An off ramp for your water. Flip it and you send water around the softener, say when you're filling the pool or watering the lawn, because grass doesn't care about soft water and salt isn't free. No tools, no plumber, just a valve.
A touch screen that runs the show. Think of it as the dashboard. Turn the Wi-Fi on and it'll email you when something needs attention, so you find out from your phone instead of from a cold shower.
The little feature that saves the big headache. It watches your salt and alerts you before you run low, and it even catches a salt bridge, that sneaky crust that fools the tank into thinking it's full when it's empty underneath. No more lifting the lid to guess.
Baffle and distribution screens spread incoming water evenly across the tank. Without them you get channeling, which is water carving one gully through the media like a stream cutting through sand, so the gully does all the work and the rest just sits there. Even spread means every bit of media earns its keep.
The heart of it. A two or three compartment design you configure with the exact media your water needs. This is the reason one Signature Series can solve a stack of problems that would normally take two or three separate units.
A backstop that shuts things down if something goes wrong. It's the circuit breaker of the system. You'll probably never think about it, and the one time you need it, it's the difference between a shrug and a flooded garage.
Shields the air check valve and keeps the brine concentration steady, which is a quiet, technical way of saying it helps the regeneration run right every single time so your soft water stays consistent.
The customizable part, explained
This is where "customizable" stops being a brochure word and turns into something real. We pick from these based on your water test, then load them into your chambers. Every single unit already comes with Bacteriastat at the base, so the tank stays clean on its own.
The softening media. Removes calcium and magnesium fast, with high capacity, thanks to beads about 23 percent smaller than standard resin.
Knocks down free chlorine, heavy metals, and micro-organisms. The workhorse for city water.
High-grade coconut-shell carbon that pulls out bad taste and odor. This is your "the water finally tastes clean" media.
Reduces dissolved iron, hydrogen sulfide gas, and heavy metals. Built for the problems wells tend to bring.
Ends rust staining by reducing dissolved iron and manganese in your water.
Another well-water specialist, cutting iron, manganese, and that rotten-egg hydrogen sulfide smell.
A high-density garnet filter media that catches sediment and grit before it reaches your taps.
Finely crushed white marble that neutralizes acidic water, so it stops slowly eating your plumbing.
Targets nitrates specifically, the kind that run off from farms, golf courses, and heavily fertilized ground.
Charged beads that grab the organic material that mixes into some groundwater and tints or tastes it.
Sits at the bottom of the tank in every configuration to help prevent bacteria growing inside the system. You don't choose it, it just comes.
You won't get all of these. That'd be like ordering everything on the menu. You get the two or three that your water actually calls for, which is exactly why the test comes first.
The published numbers
Most water company sites won't show you this. Here it is, as Hague publishes it, so you're comparing apples to apples with whatever else you're looking at.
| System type | Whole house softener and filter, single cabinet |
|---|---|
| Media chambers | 2 or 3 compartment, fully customizable |
| Softening media | Fine Mesh Resin, beads about 23% smaller than standard resin |
| Brining | Up Flow Absolute Brining, draws only the salt and water needed |
| Resin bed | Packed resin bed, keeps the unit compact without losing softening power |
| Controller | Smart Touch Controller, optional Wi-Fi email alerts |
| Salt monitoring | Audible and visual Salt Monitor, standard |
| Included in every unit | Bacteriastat at base of tank |
| Efficiency, as reported by Hague | Up to 80% less time, up to 50% less water, up to 50% less salt vs. conventional units |
| Dimensions | 38″ x 30″ x 15″ (as published by Hague) |
| Certification | WQA Tested and Certified under industry standards |
| Assembly | Designed, assembled and tested in the USA |
| Warranty | 25 year limited warranty from the manufacturer |
The one number we always confirm in person is flow. Think of flow rate like a doorway. It needs to be wide enough that everyone in the house can pull water at once without bumping shoulders. A three bedroom is a different doorway than a six bathroom home with everyone leaving at seven in the morning. So we measure your actual flow at the hose bib before we finalize the configuration, not after. Undersizing is the number one reason people end up calling about pressure, and we'd rather not be that call.
Local context
We work one county on purpose, so we can be specific about this instead of hand-wavy.
City water here is usually a two-part problem. Orange County tap water tends to run hard, somewhere around 12 to 23 grains per gallon in a lot of neighborhoods, and it's chlorinated. That's basically the Signature Series' home turf, Fine Mesh Resin for the hardness and carbon for the chlorine taste, both handled in the one cabinet. This is the exact situation where having a softener and a filter in a single unit stops being a nice-to-have and starts being the obvious move.
Wells are their own conversation. Out in the canyons some homes run on private wells, and wells bring things city water never does, iron, sulfur smell, acidic water, sometimes nitrates from nearby agriculture. This is where the customizable chambers really shine, because there's a media for each of those. On a well we always test first and talk second. No two wells read alike.
The garage still matters. A two car garage in a 1970s tract home is already holding a washer, a dryer, a water heater, and boxes nobody's opened since the move. The Signature Series is a single upright cabinet, a little over three feet tall, so it asks for one footprint instead of the two-tank sprawl. When our tech is out for the test, we look at the actual spot and tell you straight whether it fits.
We stay in Orange County for a reason. One county means the crew already knows how the water behaves from Irvine down to the coast, so nobody's learning your neighborhood on your dime. Our trucks are in these towns most weeks.
Our shop is at 222 Goddard in Irvine and our trucks run daily, so most appointments land the same week.
Signature Series or Model 97
People ask us to compare these two constantly, so here they are side by side instead of each pretending the other doesn't exist.
| WaterMax Signature Series | Maximizer Model 97 | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Several water problems at once needing different media | Hardness is the main problem, and space is tight |
| Design | 2 or 3 customizable media chambers | Single cabinet, brine tank built in |
| Softens and filters | Both, at the same time, in one pass | Softens, with Ultra-Fil sediment filtration |
| Media options | Eleven, including carbon, iron, sulfur, nitrate and tannin media | Ultra-Fil, plus Chlorostat or Sulfurstat variants |
| Efficiency (Hague reported) | Up to 80% less time, 50% less water, 50% less salt | Low salt and water use via fine mesh resin |
| Cartridges to replace | None, media lives in the chambers | None, filtration is self cleaning |
| Manufacturer warranty | 25 year limited | 15 year limited |
Here's the simple version. If your water test comes back showing hardness and not much else, and space is tight, the Model 97 handles it beautifully and takes up half the room. If it comes back showing hardness plus chlorine plus iron plus something else, that's exactly what the Signature Series chambers were built for, and the longer 25 year warranty comes along for the ride. One's a paring knife, the other's the full knife block. We'd rather put you in the right one than the bigger one.
The honest part
It's probably right for you if your water's got more than one thing going on, or you just don't know what's in it and want one system that can be configured to cover whatever the test turns up. If you own the place and you'd rather buy once than bolt on a second unit next year, this is the one.
It's probably overkill if hardness is genuinely your only complaint and space is your real constraint. In that case the Maximizer Model 97 does the job for less room and less money, and we'll tell you so. We're not going to sell you three chambers to solve one problem.
It's also not for you if you rent, since this is permanent plumbing work, or if you're hunting for something under a hundred dollars from a marketplace. That's a perfectly fair thing to want. It just isn't this.
Thirty minutes at your kitchen sink settles all of it. Hardness, chlorine, iron, total dissolved solids, pH, plus pressure and flow at the hose bib. We write the numbers down and hand them to you, whether you buy anything or not. Think of it as a blood panel for your plumbing.
Straight from Hague
Both pages Hague publishes on the WaterMax Signature Series. Read the source yourself rather than taking our word for any of it.
Certification and warranty
Two separate things cover this system, and it's worth knowing which is which before you buy from anybody, us included.
A 25 year limited warranty on the system, WQA Tested and Certified, and designed, assembled and tested in the USA. The terms are Hague's, and we'll walk you through the actual document before you decide anything.
Our own work is covered under The McCowin Guarantee. And when a manufacturer claim ever comes up, we file it for you rather than handing you a phone number for Ohio and wishing you luck.
If the Signature Series we install and configure doesn't do what we said it would:
The performance guarantee runs one year from your installation date. Service support doesn't expire.
From Orange County homeowners
Installs, plus a few on how the service has gone since. That second part is what a 25 year warranty actually rests on.
Ronald and Cindi
Tustin homeowners
“We were completely pleased with the installation of a water softener system.”
They wrote that Brian and Alan answered every question and made the adjustments needed to fit the system perfectly in their garage.
Kathy Leedom
Irvine homeowner
“He was thorough, answered all my questions, and couldn't have been nicer.”
Brian walked her through the system, then Joel came out to install the tanks and show her how it all works.
Anita
Laguna Niguel homeowner
“They carry many different manufacturers and can recommend the one best suited for your needs.”
She wanted a system that was efficient and produced the least waste water, and wrote that is exactly what she got.
Jennifer Hill
Costa Mesa homeowner
“They're so professional and helpful. I feel completely safe with their system in my home.”
She described the team as reliable and trustworthy, and said that's rare these days.
Henry Novell
Google review
“Good company. Answered every question I had.”
After a Hague water softener and reverse osmosis installation.
Mike Michino
Google review
“Meticulous, and complete in every detail. They do not cut any corners.”
On his annual service visit. He wrote that the technician had him reprogram the unit himself so he could do it after they left.
Ethan Blair
Google review
“We have been with McCowin water for 7 years and only encountered positive results.”
Seven years of quoting, scheduling, service and follow up.
Tom Atkins
Google review
“Good company. High integrity.”
Several years as a customer. Brian came out personally on his most recent visit.
Questions
Most softeners do one job. They soften. If your water also has chlorine, or iron, or a smell, you're back to bolting a second unit onto the wall next to the first. The Signature Series was built to skip that. It's a softener and a filter in one cabinet, with a two or three compartment design that gets loaded with whatever your water actually needs. Think of it less like a single appliance and more like a toolbox we pack for your house specifically. Same box, different tools inside, depending on what your water test turns up.
It means the inside of the tank isn't fixed. There are two or three chambers, and we fill them with a combination chosen from about eleven Hague media options. Fine Mesh Resin for hardness. Carbon for chlorine taste and smell. Media for iron, for sulfur, for acidic water, even for nitrates near farmland. Every unit already includes Bacteriastat at the base to keep the tank from growing anything. So instead of buying a system and hoping it covers your problems, we read your water first and then decide what goes inside. It's the difference between off the rack and tailored.
Softened water does feel different in the shower, a little silkier, because the soap is finally rinsing instead of fighting the minerals. Some people love it right away and a few take a week to get used to it. As for salty, no. Softening swaps hardness for a tiny amount of sodium, and the amount depends on how hard your water was to start with. It's nowhere near enough to taste. If you're watching sodium or you'd just rather not, we can run potassium instead, and plenty of homes add reverse osmosis at the kitchen tap so drinking and cooking water goes through its own stage. We'll lay out both at the test.
Simple version. The Model 97 is the specialist. If hardness is basically your whole problem and space is tight, it handles it beautifully in a small single cabinet. The Signature Series is the generalist, the one you reach for when your water has more than one thing going on. Its two or three chambers exist so it can soften and filter several problems at once, and it carries a longer 25 year warranty. One's a paring knife, the other's the full knife block. Your water test tells us which conversation we're actually having, and that test is free.
Yes, and that's the whole point of the design. The softening happens through ion exchange in the resin, the same as any good softener. The filtering happens in the other chambers, using whatever media your water calls for, carbon for chlorine, media for iron or sulfur, and so on. Water moves through all of it in one pass, in one cabinet. Most systems on the market make you choose, soften or filter, and then sell you a second tank for the other job. This one just does both.
The Salt Monitor is a small thing that saves a real headache. It watches your salt level and gives you an audible and visual alert when it's running low, and it even catches a salt bridge, which is when the salt crusts over and fools the tank into thinking it's full when it isn't. No more guessing, no more lifting the lid to peek. The Wi-Fi is optional. Turn it on and the system can email you those alerts so you know before you're standing in the garage. You don't need it for the softener to work perfectly. It's a convenience, not a requirement.
Less than you'd expect, and that's by design. Two things do the heavy lifting. First, the fine mesh resin has beads about 23 percent smaller than standard resin, and smaller beads mean more surface area doing the work, the same reason ground coffee brews faster than whole beans. Second, Up Flow Absolute Brining only draws the salt and water it actually needs to refresh the bed instead of flooding it. Hague reports the result is up to 80 percent less time, up to 50 percent less water, and up to 50 percent less salt than a conventional unit. You'll feel that on the salt bill for years.
The Signature Series is WQA Tested and Certified under industry standards, and it's designed, assembled and tested in the USA. The warranty is a 25 year limited warranty from Hague, the manufacturer, and we'll walk you through the actual document before you buy rather than after. Our own installation work is covered separately under The McCowin Guarantee, and when a manufacturer claim ever comes up, we file it for you instead of handing you a phone number for Ohio.
Almost always, yes. Hague publishes the dimensions at 38 by 30 by 15 inches, so it's a single upright cabinet a little over three feet tall, not the two tank sprawl a lot of softeners need. The packed resin bed is part of why, it lets the unit stay compact without giving up softening power. That said, we don't guess. When our technician comes out for the free water test, we look at the actual spot, the plumbing, and the drain, and we tell you honestly whether it fits where you're picturing it.
Both, and this is where the customizable chambers really earn their keep. City water usually means hardness plus chlorine, so we'd lean on Fine Mesh Resin and carbon. A well is a different animal, often iron, sulfur smell, acidic water, sometimes nitrates from nearby farmland. The Signature Series has media for every one of those, Sulfurstate and GreenSand Plus for iron and sulfur, Calcite for acidic water, Nitrate Select Resin for the farm runoff. On a well we always test first and talk second, because no two wells read the same.
No cartridges to unscrew and rebuy every few months. The filtering happens in the media chambers, not in a throwaway cartridge, so there's nothing to swap on a schedule. You'll still keep salt in the brine tank, and we'd still recommend an annual service check to keep everything reading right, but you're not making a standing appointment with the hardware store. That's a real part of what makes it cheaper to own over fifteen or twenty years than it looks on day one.
That's exactly what the free in-home water test is for, and it's the step you should never skip. About thirty minutes at your kitchen sink and hose bib tells us your hardness, chlorine, iron, pH, total dissolved solids, plus your pressure and flow. We write the numbers down and hand them to you. Then, and only then, do we pick the media that goes in the chambers. Buying a customizable system without testing first is like ordering a tailored suit over the phone. The whole advantage is the measuring.
Thirty minutes at your kitchen sink tells us whether the Signature Series belongs in your house, and exactly which media your chambers should carry. The test is free, the numbers are yours to keep, and there's nothing to buy.
Or come see one in person at the showroom. 222 Goddard, Irvine, CA 92618. (949) 569-5736. Monday through Friday, 9 to 5.
