Water softener - worth it?

[GnomeDePlume]

We live in a hard water area. Limescale forms everywhere.

Reading on the bathroom thread a few people mentioned getting water softeners.

So, can you soften the water for the whole house? Is it worth it? What is the approximate cost?

Any thoughts gratefully received please.

we have one as we're in a very hard water area & it makes such a difference but put in a filter tap as well so you can drink unsoftened water or use it for things like a fish tank

Thank you, this is sounding hopeful

It should. be fairly simple to refill your CH with "hard" water, by just setting the valves to bypass the softener while you top the CH up.

As I understand it isn't an issue to use softened water on the hot water side of a combo boiler, but you might want to check with your manufacturer.

I got one installed and I would recommend it to anyone who is in a hard water area. I have a small Harvey minimax as I was retrofitting it in my under sink unit in the kitchen. I use about 3 bags of mini curve salt a month. They are £100 for 30 bags. That works out to be £10 a month,

The unit softens the water to all taps in the house, except the kitchen and outside taps. I chose not to soften the kitchen tap because I don’t feel comfortable drinking softened water.

To me the immediate benefits are no more limescales to clean and better showers (shampoo and soap foams better).

I don’t notice any drop in pressure for showers. But we have a unvented water cylinder.

Ours is in the garage as the stopcock is in the downstairs toilet which is too small to fir the softener unit. The plumber just drilled through the wall and connected it there. We have a Harvey which uses salt blocks. Must have been installed 10 years ago! Cleaning is a doddle, barely use any soap, shampoo, washing up liquid or washing powder! Don't have a separate tap so use softened water for cooking, tean and coffee but we do drink bottled water because we prefer the taste. Possibly the best upgrade we've done and it has more than paid for itself in the savings from buying less products.

I'm also interested, so thanks for all the info so far. Do you use the softened water in your kettle or the normal hard water?

The difficulty is that the natural place for a softener would be in the utility room next to the stop cock. The boiler is on the top floor (3 storey house). To top up the CH would mean draining down all the water in the system so that unsoftened water was flowing through to the CH.

The boiler dumps pressure fairly regularly so topping it up isnt unusual.

If the boiler was also in the utility room (which would have been the sensible place to put it) this wouldnt be an issue.

I'm not sure what would be involved in moving the boiler. Both times it has given up the ghost we have been tight for money so have replaced like for like.

I would have thought running most of the soft water out of the pipes would have been sufficient, i.e. run the bath for 60 seconds.

I don't think a small amount of "soft" will do any harm. I have a similar set-up as my top up is feed from an upstairs pipework that's soft.

That's a good thought, thank you. The bath is on the top floor as is DS who is normally the person who spots that the boiler has gone off. DH has trained him up in re-starting the system.

I don't understand why you are concerned about using the softened water in your combi boiler - is anything it will be better for it, less limescale build up etc.

We’ve had a Harvey’s water softener for coming up to 10 years now, and a combi boiler for all that time. The softened water goes through the combi boiler and it’s totally fine.
We use the softened water in the kettle as it makes tea taste way better. We have an unsoftened tap for cold in the kitchen and also the outside back garden tap is unsoftened.
You can’t use softened water for watering plants but apart from that it’s great for all other stuff. Makes cleaning so much easier, hair washing and tea are better, and appliances last better.

Absolutely worth it. We suffered with hard water for years and I can't count how many appliances it ruined and how many bottles of Viakal we must have gone through.

This really. All the web searches I have done indicate it is fine to use softened water and if anything better. It will also help dissolve the current limescale buildup you may have in your system so may even undo some of the damage caused previously by hard water in a combi boiler. You may want to choose a different inhibitor in the closed CH circuit though.

There is some discussion here :

https://www.hydroworks.co.uk/169/Can-you-put-softened-water-into-a-boiler

There is some complexity because of course some people in the UK have naturally soft water rather than softened water through a domestic device. The two are not equivalent.

The unvented cyclinder is fed/pressuried by the cold water inlet. So I think even in an unvented system there will some drop in pressure due to a softener as it would be placed between the cold water inlet and the cylinder.

Of course you could feed your boiler directly off unsoftened water, but that would negate a lot of the benefits of having soft water IMO, so I don't see the point in doing that.

For me the issue is I have a 3 story house with the unvented cylinder at the top, so there is a lot of work to be done getting the cold water that far up.

Below is the FAQ from Worcester Bosch, you decide... Link

Can I use artificially softened water in the heating circuit with my boiler?

You can have a water softener in combination with our boiler as it will prevent the hot water circuit from scaling up and losing efficiency. However, the central heating circuit should be filled with hard water and a chemical inhibitor. This can be done by using the water softener bypass when filling or topping up. Alternatively, the filling loop feed can be connected upstream of the water softener.

I'd like to see the logic behind that. To me it makes no sense at all in terms of the science I can think of.

Why does soft water help the DHW circuit but not the CH circuit in a combi boiler ?

The CH water obviously has inhibitor added to it, that is the only difference I can think of. But then it just becomes an issue of using the right formulation inhibitor - you could even formulate an inhibitor that adds in the appropriate hardness if you wanted to !

But it makes no sense, especially when you consider the UK has a very wide variety of water hardness across the country.

If I saw some science/explanation I would maybe be convinced. I do see how there is a difference between artifically softened water and some naturally soft water (more acidic apparently) and maybe to avoid confusion manufacturers have decided to not recommend any soft water in general for use with their systems.

I rather agree!

One of the best things we put into our house. No more scrubbing the gaps or shower and it always looks clean now. We are a busy house of 4 and use 1 long block of salt every 3 months. Works out to about £40 per year. We also took the opportunity to install a hot water tap at the same time as we replaced our old tap to get filtered water too.

@Dbank and @GasPanic thank you both. Between you, you have expressed my confusion and given me some clarity. We are about to get the boiler serviced so we can ask then to see what their opinion is.