Urgent advice needed re soft water please

Gosh, I'm more confused than ever now. Thank you everyone for your replies. It is going to be a block salt system (Harvey's, if by chance anyone's ever used them) The drinking water will be filtered seperately so I assume that will take care of undesirables? I think we shall have to get a new external tap fitted from the mains - our pipework is complicated, don't know why.

 

Is this the supplier telling you the pipework is complicated and potentially charging you more money ?:skp::cnfs:

 

Although if the water comes in to one side of the house, where the water softener is, and the drinking water and outside tap are on the other side / miles away ... then some faffing is required :(

 

I'm still confused as to why anybody would want a water softener??

I'm probably a dinosaur, but what does it do, and how does it make things better?

Surely the calcium in the water is good for us.

I'm not totally sure but I think most of the water that we get comes from chalk boreholes in the North Downs, and apart from a bit of scale in the kettle I've not had any problems.

If your not softening your drinking water you will still get scale in the kettle I guess, so what is the point of a water softener?

 

The water here is very hard Marley.

I guess its to do with how you get you hot water then, I have a normal indirect system where the same water goes through the boiler and the rads all the time, it only contains so much chalk, and a small amount at that, once its come out, it only tops up occasionally.
Not furred up in 25yrs.

You can descale a kettle in a few minutes, just turn it on with no water in it. lol
Seriously, its not that difficult

 

Having moved to the south coast from Scotland, I can well understand why you are having a water softener installed. Lime-scale can clog up pipes and even stop any water getting though. Our son - in 15-yr-old house in Cambridgeshre - only found there was a problem when hot water taps didn't seem to work, so it's important to deal with that before a problem occurs.

We have no water-softening installed so far, but our neighbours have, and it doesn't cover the outside tap which still comes directly from the mains. (This they also use for filling bottles for drinking water.)

Do you have any water butts though? You may not have a great deal of rain in Canterbury, but it's amazing how much water can be collected from a roof after a rain shower. We have one here, and are considering putting gutters round the back and far away side of the summerhouse to collect more there. We seldom have to use mains water for the garden.

 

Your not keeping up with the Dai Jones then!

 

Yes Catherine we do have water butts, but my husband laboriously fixed up an irrigation system for our patio pots & the new border as we're away quite a lot & were sorely testing the good will of our neighbours.

I am seriously rethinking the whole business now, or at least the salt method. Will research the electronic/reverse osmosis way. Don't think in all honesty we have thought it through thoroughly (!) Thanks to everyone for their input.

 

Hi, here's good info on how things work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_softening

In general, calcium is the bad guy, although great for your teeth, it does have a negative impact on things like household appliances. And, although all the detergents do have softening ingredients, in very hard water areas you'll either have to use additional softeners when doing laundry, or replace your washing machine more often.

Kettles, irons and coffee makers are easy to descale, but the quality of the water also affects the taste of your tea or coffee.

Softeners, in general, do not make the water salty. "Salty" meaning sodium chloride, table salt. Plantwise, everything should be safe.