Water softener for one tap?

[Jetteage]

Would like to know if small water softeners exist? We would like to install one in our main bathroom for the hand basin,
and possibly elsewhere but the water supply in our building is such that we can’t install any of the larger models I have found mentioned
in here.

I dont understand why you would only want softened water for one tap? Usually you would want the benefits of softened water throughout the whole house i,e. Baths, showers, central heating and washing machine?

you can but I wouldn't recommend it.

They are used in catering establishments, to supply a glass washer or commercial dishwasher (these often do not have built-in minisofteners like domestic appliances usually do)

the ones I've used have to be regenerated manually; you close the valves; unscrew the lid;, pour in a litre or so of salt, open some of the valves in a particular order so it runs backwards through the machine to regenerate it, change the valve settings, run fresh water through to rinse it, change the valves back to normal operation. Staff sometimes are scared to do it, or may make mistakes possibly involving salty water all over the floor. They were round about 600mm high and 250mm in diameter, with tubes and hoses. I think they may have cost £300 or so.

here we are

cheaper than I thought.

Thank you, I will look into those. I noticed the Quooker tap has a scale control filter which isn’t very big (though very expensive) and I don’t fully understand if it’s a softener.

The reason we can’t have one central softener is because we live in an old apartment building and the water supply enters our flat in several different places. We could fit a softener in our kitchen/laundry but not then be able to access it, given the way the kitchen has been planned. In our main bathroom we have the chance to install one, but it will take up a lot of our cabinet. We are keen for one as chose we textured graphite shower tray and dark quartz basin - they look stunning when clean, but I have better things to do.

I will be able to plan our other bathroom around one, but it is tiny and yet again would only supply shower and basin in there.

Having looked at the smaller softeners, these seem to work for a cold feed, whereas we have a separate hold and cold supply from the building, so unless we install two softeners (can a hot water supply even be softened?) then it seems impossible for us to achieve fully softened water in our bathroom.

there are some hot-water softeners, but I have never seen one.

Consider altering the plumbing in your house and (assuming that you have your own hot-water supply from a cylinder or combi) softening the cold feed to that. Quite likely you can also take off a cold pipe from the same softener to the bathroom cold taps. If you can soften the hot water and the bathroom cold, it will make quite a difference.

A greater cost you could get a plumber to rationalise the pipework throughout your home. I expect most of it runs under floorboards.

PigletJohn thankyou so much for your advice!

The hot water is supplied from a common boiler in our building, which we have just replaced. There was talk of softening the whole supply but the expense was a deterrent for most and others were genuinely concerned our pipes might fall apart once the scale has been flushed through. I don’t think it even ended up being presented to the consultant.

I am keen to do all we can to soften the supple to the showers and basins mixers. The kitchen and appliances don’t bother me anyway near as much as our beautiful 1m x 1m glass shower enclosure which looks opaque most of the time.

If you're in a hard water area, there will be at least one Water Softener specialist locally, probably supplying hotels, bars and offices as well as homes. They probably have a workshop and may assemble or order machines according to customers needs. They may have their own "brand" assembled using standard components (water softeners are very simple machines). They may refuse to repair cheap machines bought from supermarkets or DIY sheds. You can check how long they've been in business at www.gov.uk/get-information-about-a-company (UK government official site)

Call them and ask "do you repair water softeners?"

If the answer is yes, ask if they can recommend something.

If the answer is no, try someone else. It means they don't have competent workers, and if you buy something and want it repaired, you'll be on your own.

The companies who put leaflets through your door, or advertise in the Sunday papers, tend to be overpriced.

Sorry to hijack, but can I ask a technical question? Can you actually drink softened water? Whenever I’ve searched in the past I’ve found either softener sites not commuting either way, or people saying it has salt in (I thought the salt just recharged the system not went in the water)

Yes.

It doesn't contain salt

It does contain sodium bicarbonate (as found in baking powder, indigestion remedies, soluble tablets).

It contains less sodium than milk, coke, bread, Perrier.

here we are

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/a2519090-Kitchen-questions-flooring-water-softener#57869870

it's a question that crops up from time to rime.

It's possible that there are other benefits from drinking hard water, so It's quite normal to have an unsoftened tap in the kitchen.

Soft water cleans much better, so use it in your washing machine, bath, shower, window-cleaner's bucket etc. IMO hard water doesn't make good tea but perhaps opinions differ.

So we have concluded that it is impossible to soften most of the water in our apartment because we have hot water from a building boiler and many different source pipes. I have been reading about online filters and wondered whether installing one of these under the bathroom basin (cold only) would be worth it? Surely any reduction in scale is good? Apparently a softener would still take up a whole cabinet just for the cold water of one tap.

I meant to type inline filters!

Please factor in having to replace pipes if you do out in a softener, even if it's not for all taps. We didn't and once the softened water had been running around the house for less than a week rather predictably all the pin holes in the pipes, once furred up with limescale, opened up and we have water springing up all over the place. All because the plumber didn't to replace 10m of pipes.

My neighbours has serious concerns about this if we softened the water of the whole building (would be the only possible way as we have separate hot and cod supply to each bathroom/kitchen. I didn’t realise it could actually happen!

Are they steel pipes?

Most water softeners involve some form of chemical exchange to break down the calcium carbonate (limescale ), so that's why you shouldn't attach a softenervous to the rising main/drinking water tap.
Keeping your thermostat below 60°c will prevent the limescale precipitating out of solution and furring up hot pipes/appearing on taps etc.

Please explain "so that's why"

I have no control over the temperature of the water in our building of 25 flats.

We have a Quooker tap on the kitchen that will be scale controlled and filtered, but I wonder whether an inline water filter (like a Brita in-line) would make any difference to the scale if installed in the cold water supply to the basin tap. It seems to be our only option if we don’t want to loose a whole cupboard to soften the cold water only to one tap!

Also as for softening the water in the building it was for the supply to the boiler only we were considering it, but it wasn’t pursued which is annoying because all of our flats are affected on a daily basis by very hard water.

Thank you pigletjohn - softened water tastes weird but guess that’s because of what’s been removed. I’m used to the taste of chalky lime I guess :)

Interested in hearing what you come up with.

I live in a new build flat that also has a communal boiler, and very hard water. I presume that means we have a separate hot water feed and a cold mains feed, but i'm not really sure. So I wonder if I'd have to get two different softeners or how it would work. I mostly just want it for the shower, as the soft water seems better for my skin and hair. But I guess it would be good if it went to the dishwasher and washing machine too (but those are both in the kitchen, so might be hard to then keep the kitchen tap with hard water?)

hmm. I looked into it a bit when I first moved in, but then just got a sort of filter in the shower-head, as everything else seemed too complicated. The shower-head filter didn't do much, though.

The pipes in my building should at least be ok as they're quite new.. one would hope. But I don't trust them much, so who knows.