Does anyone have a TAC saltless water softener?

[MothershipG]

I had a standard water softener in my old house that you put salt in which was a bit of a pain so I am considering a Template Assisted Crystallization TAC one this time. But my plumber has not encountered them and is sceptical.

Does anyone have one? What do you think?

The Water Filter Man has them and more expensive is the Next Scale Stop one.

It is not a water softener.

If you examine their advertisement carefully, you will find that they do not describe it as one.

They mention filtration. Filtration does not remove dissolved minerals.

They mention WRAS approval. This covers such aspects as not causing contamination, and not leaking. It is not a certification of effectiveness.

It is probably one of those products that work in the same way that a copper bracelet cures rheumatism, or a drop of purified water cures disease. How it works is explained here

There are other devices available that contain Polyphospate beads, a chemical that slowly dissolves into the water and reduces scaling in boilers. The beads have to be replenished when it's all dissolved. I don't know how they work. The chemical is quite inexpensive. I'm seen them advertised at about £40 per kg. People used to hang them in the water tank in a mesh bag. I don't see polyphosphates mentioned in any of those adverts.

I found a description on this ebay vendor. he says "it is not a water softener." His other description seems similar to the devices mentioned earlier.

In the US, they seem more popular, and the beads seem to retail at around $10 per pound.

Thanks for the responses @PigletJohn

It is not filtration and I do understand that it works in a different way but I don't think it's fair to compare it to copper bangles & homeopathy.

It does not use chemicals, according to the website...
Uses Polymeric Beads with nucleation sites to convert dissolved hardness into microscopic crystals
Conversion is through a catalytic reaction at the molecular level
Once crystals grow to the template size, the crystals are released and remain in the water without forming scale

I don't know enough about the science to know if this is plausible or hokum.

So I'm probably best off playing it safe and going back to heavy sacks of salt.