Q We live in a part of the country that has hard water, and it’s clogging and ruining our dishwasher. We’re on our second machine in five years. Often the dishes are barely clean or need to be washed again. We don’t want to install a whole-house water softener. Is there another solution?

A If you’re worried about introducing salt into your home’s water, connect the water softener to the water heater only. This will prolong the life of both the water heater and the appliances downstream from it, such as your dishwasher. It will also solve the problem of introducing softened water to the house’s entire water supply, including drinking water. If you don’t want to install a water softener because it takes up too much space, there are compact water softeners, some of them not much bigger than a large wastebasket.