two sources for a hose bib?

[RichSpeidel]

I have very hard water at my home so I have a water softener. I have a hose bib on the side of my house, right near where the main water comes in which is also where the water softener is. I have access to the plumbing both before and after the water softener. I am looking into the possibility of adding some sort of A/B valve where I can switch the water source for the hose bib between the pre- and post-softened water. Cars wash better with softened water, while plants and flowers thrive better with unsoftened water. I would leave the hose bib source as the unsoftened water the majority of the time for watering the garden, and switch to softened water just for washing the car or other miscleaneous reasons. I have been unable to find the type of valve I am looking for. Does it even exist? Something sort of like a garden hose splitter but in reverse, and even better if there is only one knob or handle to turn to switch from one source to the other. Thanks in advance!

 

[havasu]

My son has this set up, and simply added another hose bib which is strictly for soft water.

 

[CT18]

None that i have ever seen. You would have to run separate lines with shut offs to the hose bibb piping and manually shut down

 

[RS]

That's what I have done at our houses in the past, I have a separate hose bibs for soft and hard water. You don't want to use hard water for washing cars or windows!