Please talk to me about water softeners

[FlouncingBabooshka]

We live in an area with extremely hard water. I’m interested in having a water softening system fitted but I’m quite confused about the whole process. I have a few - probably very stupid - questions

Roughly how much do they cost to buy and install? I know there’s bound quite a price range but I really have no idea what that range would be and the water softening websites seem quite coy about it.

How big would an average unit be and where can it be sited if there’s no room under the sink? Our stopcock is in a kitchen larder that will be in the utility once the new kitchen is done. I’m assuming that would be the ideal place for it?

My understanding is that, because we’re in such a hard water area, the amount of sodium used would render the water unsafe to drink and we’d need a water filtering tap. Is this an additional tap or can you get the filtered and unfiltered water from the same tap?

If you have a water softener, which one is it and how highly do you rate it?

Anything else I should know or consider?

Thanks in advance.

Probably worth having a chat with a few neighbours - in a hard water area I'd expect most to have one. Cost £4-600. on average. Size varies by make but assume something like 50cmH x 45cm deep x 20cmW. You'd have to speak to the installer re location because ideally it goes after the cold water tap in the kitchen so you can get your drinking water unsoftened whilst softening all other taps.

They really are worth it though - save a lot of damage to taps, shower valves etc.

Thanks @RandomLemonVerbena, that’s really useful information regarding cost and size.

Sounds like location might be a problem for us. We’re in a bungalow and I can’t see where it would go if it needs to feed into the bathrooms but not impact on the kitchen.

Following!

Ours cost £1k .

It's in the garage, and the water for washing is bypassed to the tank, with the mains going to the kitchen. Lots of piping going on in there!

Apparently it's a false economy if you get the cheaper one, because they use cheap resin beads and these beads get broken down by the hard water and the softener explodes and all the beads end up in your plumbing! So says my local guy. Probably been sold a lie, but the last one he changed, which had stopped working, when he removed the valve a huge spout of "stuff" gushed out...... who knows?

Anyway, for what it's worth we have a Harveys....

Thanks @BigWoollyJumpers.

We have a combi-boiler so no tank. Perhaps that complicates things further?

Ours fit in a single cupboard ( by stopcock bottom of larder ) the salt is cheap and free delivery. Kitchen tap isn’t linked . Keeps appliances sparkly! Definitely good investment . Recommend 🙌

So you can keep your kitchen tap as normal? Does it stop the white on the shower screen?

Do britta water filters stop limescale? My kettle is terrible.

Ours is in garage costs just over £1k installed (can take it with us if we move) Its a Twin Tech salt comes in blocks and is safe to drink. Bathrooms are so much easier to clean as no white limescale, my skin is better and kettle doesnt get scaled up. Wouldnt be without one now.

I was hoping for 500 max

That’s where I was hoping to put one @Popetthetreehugger but I’m not sure if we could bypass the kitchen tap but still connect it to the bathrooms.

@Golden2021 a Brita filter will definitely stop your kettle from developing scale.

@nicknamehelp - how hard is the water in your area? The article I read suggested that if you live in an average sort of area in terms of water hardness the water will be safe to drink but in a very hard water area it will introduce too much sodium into the water.

I'm in Ireland and have a softener on the outside behind the sink. We then have a 'drinking tap' next to our regular tap. The main softener is run by filling with salt and the drinking tap is run by a liquid as it's not safe to drink the other stuff. Made a huge difference to us as the hard water was killing everything.

You only need a bypass drinking tap if you don't like the soft water taste. It's just a preference thing.

Mine was about £1200, it goes wherever your mains enters the house and then can pipe like normal.

You might want a separate outside tap so you don't use your paid for softened water on your garden.

Mine is great, much better hair and skin and I don't have to buy new taps every two years as they're not corroded from the inside.

@FlouncingBabooshka

Had one for 7 years it’s brilliant
Not sure if electric cost but about 8 blocks a year( imagine more with a family about £14 a month if changed monthly)

It’s small under the kitchen sink abs was about 700 fitted

Had mine fitted about 18 months ago, we had 2 rising mains and other plumbing complications. The previous owners of the property had been told it wouldn’t be possible to fit a water softener but we had the guy from Kindwater who worked out a solution for us. Well worth the expense.
The kitchen tap is 3-way, softened hot and cold water, and a non-softened cold supply. Outside taps are non-softened as well.

Please don't worry about your drinking water being softened. I live in an extremely hard water area- 277 parts per million. The sodium exchange means that if you drink 2L of water from my tap, you are consuming around 500 milligrammes of salt. That is half a gram, or to put it in context, less salt than in a bowl of cornflakes, or in a slice of white bread.

Put your softener at your stopcock. Ask the plumber to put in a by pass for your garden tap do you don't pay to soften garden water.

We paid £1k for ours, £600 for the unit (a monarch) 1-8 person, £50 for the fitting kit, and £350 for labour. We use about 18kg salt/month. A 25kg bag from Costco costs £6.

There are other types- ours is a powered sodium exchange unit- this is because being a sodium exchange unit, it is guaranteed to remove the hardness 100%, and being powered it doesn't reduce my water pressure. Unpowered versions of sodium exchange apparently do reduce pressure (I have no experience of this, just so I have been told).

Non sodium exchange units are essentially all a variety on the same thing- ion polarity change rather than ion exchange. By changing the polarity of the magnesium and calcium ions in hard water it has a harder time sticking to pipes. This is apparently very (90%+) effective in flowing water. But if the water sits still for long enough (5+ hours) the polarity will go back and it will adhere to your pipes again.

Our unit is around 25cm wide, about 40cm deep and around 50cm tall. It sits right next to the stopcock, right below the boiler and next to the cylinder. I've had it for 3 years now and I have yet to descale my kettle once. There is no floating scale in my kettle and none in the house at all. My daughter has not had eczema now for around 3 years. The Dr said while there is no proven link between hard water and eczema, there's plenty of research currently being conducted suggesting it is, and it's entirely possible that's why it was so bad.

Get it, they're great.

If you did want to leave your kitchen (or outdoor) water unsoftened then you'd need to put a T joint immediately before the softener in your new utility room, and run a new pipe from there to kitchen/garden to carry the untreated water. Assuming your utility room is near the kitchen (and has an outside wall) that shouldn't be too difficult.

Thanks everyone, really appreciate all the information. It’s rare to find something so universally loved so I’m definitely going to look into this.

Really interesting about your daughter’s eczema @Hiddenmnetter - that alone must be worth the cost.

We have a Harvey’s one. Cost about a grand I think. It’s about the size of a large old fashioned desktop computer tower, and it’s in the utility room. We have a combi boiler. There’s a complicated pipes arrangement that comes off from it so that you can bypass it if you want to. We have it set up so that the cold kitchen tap (and outdoor tap) is unfiltered and all the other taps in the house are filtered. So we use the hot tap to fill the kettle to make tea - softened water tea tastes sooo much better than hard water. All the sinks and showers in the house are so much cleaner and non-scuzzy. Love it.

We have a Harvey twin tec and haven’t looked back . We use softened water to drink .Cold outside tap is not softened , hot outside tap is softened so the limescale doesn’t kill the filter on our hot tub . Can’t imagine life without it - cost £1500 fitted including a years worth of salt

Got one very recently with building work. We live in very hard water area and was told we basically needed one if we were having black/brushed metal bathroom fittings. Very neat and fits by our megaflo in a cupboard. Bloody love it! Only a few water spots on a shower screen after a week. Was about 900, but top end! Salt blocks seem cheap enough too

We are currently reviewing them and have someone from kinetico coming this week to give us a quote. From what I've read so far:

• if you have 2 of less bathrooms, you might get away with a single cylinder. (this might be the wrong word), but more than 2 bathrooms, best to get a larger unit with 2 cylinders, so 1 can charge whilst using the other

• Some units take loose salt, others a compressed block and some take both. The block is easier to handle, but more expensive. Check where you usually shop and what they sell. No point getting a system if you have to drive miles to get the salt style you need.

• I too am in a very hard water area. Everyone I've spoken to has a separate drinking tap due to the high salt content. It may not be a massive amount, but none of us need extra salt! Especially if pregnant or have kidney or other medical issues.

I’m considering getting one - do any of you have quooker hot water taps? Are they linked to the softener or not if so?

Did anyone have issues with lots of leaks after the line scale in old pipes dissolved?!

I have a BWT WS355 softener which fits in a regular 40cm wide kitchen base cupboard. It's in the utility room next to the mains pipe and softens all our water. It needs to be plugged in so make sure you have electricity available! We live in a hard water area but our fitters said exactly what a pp said about there being only a minute amount of salt in our drinking water. It serves three bathrooms plus kitchen and utility and wet underfloor heating throughout.

I can't taste any difference in the water. But it's made a huge difference to our chrome bathroom fittings and shower screens. The house is a new build so I couldn't comment on residual scale in the pipes.

I have a Quooker boiling water tap and it works fine. They need to have a minimum water pressure to work so your plumber needs to check that. I soak the nozzle of the Quooker in white vinegar for 20 mins every month to get rid of the tiny flecks of scale which do occur, because they are £££ to replace!!

In our old house we had the cylinder replaced and the plumber managed to drill a hole in the old one big enough to see the scale in it. It was 20-25 yrs old and was about a quarter full of scale. Horrific

I use about a third of a 25kg bag of salt pellets every month. They get delivered 6 bags at a time (can be risky to carry them in your car because of salt corrosion) and are stored in the shed. Photo shows salt pellets (its the recommended salt for our softener)