Since I'm replumbing the entire house I thought I would got for the whole nine yards, and install a Whole House Water Filter and a Water Softener.

Any advide on this being a good idea? One of my neighbors said I shouldn't install the filter since the stuff I'm filtering out is needed inside the pipes to keep the bacteria in check.

That didn't sound right to me.

The house is in Tampa, FL.

I have both in my house. I keep Ace Hardware #49682 cartridges in the filter. They are charcoal based and filter to 5 microns. They do a good job stopping the nasty black hydrocarbon stuff in our water plus the red iron oxide. $9 for a 2 pack, I change about once a month when the water pressure drops too much. They let the lime go by. The water softener catches it. In almost 30 years in this house, I never remember any problems with bacteria in the water.

Put a new Whirlpool water softener in last summer. Couldn't find anything that didn't have the #$%^&(*&@#$%^ digital controls. I am running $3 40# bags of Softheart salt pellets from Aldi's in it. The owners manual specifies 99.5% pure salt in it. The cheap Softheart along with everything else including Morton claims the same 99.5% purity. Others experience?