Question re: water softeners

[StillRunningWithScissors]

Hello,

We're planning an extension to our kitchen, and being in a very hard water area it seems a good time to have a water softener installed while having the work done.

As I understand (and please correct me if this isn't right) a tap in the kitchen is often set to bypass the softener (comes direct from the mains) so you have untreated drinking water.

Is it possible/a big hassle to have the same set up for a first floor bathroom basin tap? The tap in question is currently from the mains (not a water tank).

Thanks!

Anyone?

I guess you'll just need another pipe running up to your bathroom tap so doable. We didn't bother - the odd glass of softened water isn't too bad, fine for brushing teeth etc. When we lived in an uber hard water area we had an inline filter on the unsoftened kitchen tap so we could fill the kettle from it.

I'm sure it's doable, but might be a bit of a palaver. The softener needs to be at a point before the pipes split off, and a separate pipe put in place for the drinking water. For us this was just a matter of threading it under the floorboards to the kitchen; I would assume it would be a much bigger job to get it into the wall to upstairs.

We have a Harvey softener. The design means that there's no danger of salt getting into the system so the softened water is perfectly fine to drink, although not to everyone's taste. Fine for a drink in the middle of the night though.

We are going to have a water softener installed later this month and asked the same question. We were told it is possible but as others say, we would need to get a new pipe installed from before the softener and upstairs to the sink. In our case, the pipes up to the first floor are one room across from the room with the sink, so it would involve making holes in the ceiling and then in the upstairs wall to make it work. Also, the pipe upstairs would have to run along the wall (plastic pipe) and we wouldn't be able to fully conceal it. We opted not to bother, figuring that we wouldn't use it enough to justify the hassle to set it up.

Is there someone in your house who is likely to drink from the bathroom tap AND is on a low-sodium diet (cannot eat normal bread, ketchup, cola or milk, all of which contain vastly more sodium than softened water)?

Thanks everyone.

The bathroom will be fairly easy to run the pipe to, especially with the extension work being done.

PigletJohn, nope, no diets requiring it (and I'm ok with the idea) it's DH I have to convince. He works from home, and drinks fills up and abandons many glasses of water throughout the day.

Appreciate all of the replies :-)

OP, we have a water softener and wanted it softened everywhere apart from a separate tap in kitchen for drinking. Our useless plumber did what you want...non softened in bathroom/shower room. I think he did it because it was the easiest option for him.

We put in a non softened tap for drinking with a filter/hot/cold tap

we had water softener put in a few yrs ago.., we drink it ..can't taste the difference

I live in a very chalky area, and find softened water makes better tea. It also prevents limescale round the bathroom taps and WC, and of course you get softer skin, hair, towels etc and use much less soap and detergent.

I am all in favour of the hard-water drinking tap in the kitchen, but you might like to look at the comparative Sodium content in softened water and other things you swallow. At one time (after multiple fractures) I used to gobble Calcium mineral supplement pills.

This is from an industry site but AFAIK the figures are true

www.ukwaterservices.com/drinking-softened-water

Thanks again everyone.
Piglet, will have a read, thank you.