Limescale and hot water taps

[flowersfortea]

I’d appreciate people’s experiences and thoughts of getting a hot water tap when we get round to doing up the kitchen. Sorry for the not-very-exciting nature of this thread!

Where I live we have seriously hard water— for example I de-scale the kettle weekly but within a few days there are large flakes of limescale again. If I left a saucer under a plant pot for a while I have to use Citric acid to get limescale off where water has evaporated between watering. The whole town relies on viakal for cleaning!

So I’d really love a hot water tap and have seen there are models that should deal with limescale but I’m concerned that whilst it may be enough for ‘average’ areas that for somewhere like my area it will not be enough. We have one at work but it’s always flashing on the service/filter light and I’m worried that may indicate it’s not up to the job, don’t want to waste money on a lovely tap that won’t last or will need ridiculous amounts of servicing/upkeep!

Thanks!

Bumping for the morning crowd.... sorry it’s not the most thrilling subject!

When I lived in a hard water area and we wanted a hot water tap on our sink, what was advised to us was to have an under sink reverse osmosis water softener unit just for the sink taps (all of them including hot water one). This removes all lime scale from the water. It is also easy to maintain.
It was really nice because it meant my water for cooking and hand washing delicates would also be lime scale free.

We have a water softener. Not only did it prevent limescale, over time it actually cleared the limescale that was already there that I hadn't been able to properly remove.

We have a hard water tap for drinking though.

You could connect the hot water tap through the softener? Our tea etc comes from the soft water to keep the kettle descaled.

I live in a really hard water area as well and the only thing that really seems to help is a water softener. Otherwise its a constant descaling battle! And as @Jeremyironseverything says the most satisfying thing is that over time it clears the existing limescale as well.

Thanks both- glad to hear it is a possibility!!
I didn’t know we can drink softened water?
How often do you have to change the filters?

We live in a hard water area and have a water softener, it's the best thing we've done! Well worth looking into!!

Whereabouts in the country are you?

I have a cartridge water tap, basically under sink, mini tap on side filtered it, use it for kettle and steamer

Yes you can drink softened water. It’s just like bottled water as most bottled water is produced by filtering and softening it.

On average most reverse osmosis systems need the filter changed every six months. But it depends how hard you water is to start? The installers will test your water and give it a score. Then the water softener manual will have a table in it that says based on your hard water score how often you need to change the filter.

thanks everyone, I’m really glad to have asked and thanks for answering a rather boring question!
Water softener also a good idea as we will probably replace our scaled-up washing machine and dishwasher too so would be a good time to do it.
Time to start saving up!

We have to use salt blocks in our water softener. Don't think there is a filter involved with ours.