Water "softeners " recommendations

[Tenkaykev]

I've spent my entire life living in hard water areas (Hampshire and London) and have never needed a water softener. Yes, the kettle gets furred up a bit but you can get a kilo of citric acid for about a fiver on Ebay, and it's enough for about five years. The second house I lived in in London had a water softener. I disconnected it.

Anyway, isn't hard water supposed to be good for your teeth?

I'm almost certainly over thinking this as we have lived with very hard water for decades. Our plumber advised os to tip a teacupful of white vinegar around the stem of our kitchen mixer tap, and I use citric acid to descale the kettle, using the water from that to do the same for the shower head.
The boiler has survived about 25 years. It was having the blank canvas of a new kitchen install that got me pondering. With regard to teeth, I think it's the fluoride dosing that is responsible for that.

 

[Fastpedaller]

I'm almost certainly over thinking this as we have lived with very hard water for decades. Our plumber advised os to tip a teacupful of white vinegar around the stem of our kitchen mixer tap, and I use citric acid to descale the kettle, using the water from that to do the same for the shower head.
The boiler has survived about 25 years. It was having the blank canvas of a new kitchen install that got me pondering. With regard to teeth, I think it's the fluoride dosing that is responsible for that.

Let's put it this way...... I've been a plumber for over 20 years, in recent years I'll removed more salt water softeners than I've installed and I wouldn't fit one in my own house.

 

[rogerzilla]

The medium-hard water here doesn't do much except fur up the kettle and leave limescale stains, both easily solved with something like Oust and Viakal. Ir doesn't block pipes; I've cut open hot and cold pipes 35 years old and there is no reduction in flow diameter, just a green coating.

 

[Fastpedaller]

Blocked pipe..... That reminds me of what happened in 2012 (the big freeze)
Customer rang saying no water from his bath taps but he had water at the kitchen sink. Temp was -7C so I suggested maybe the supply to the ballcock in the loft was frozen - he agreed as his loft is very cold. A few days later he called again (temp now +5C), so I went out to him. Only then did he reveal that his water is supplied by his own borehole. The pipe to the ballcock in the loft was only 15mm and no water was coming out even if I pressed the float down - to make sure, I carefully undid the union between the supply pipe and ballcock- still nothing. When I used a magnet from the van, I could attach it to the copper pipe! The end was totally blocked with ferric oxide. I had to cut back the pipe a meter before finding water. I replaced it with a new 22mm pipe back to the incoming main. The original pipe had been there 40 years, so unless the water becomes really brown the 22mm pipe won't block until maybe year 2200

 

[DaveReading]

I've spent my entire life living in hard water areas (Hampshire and London) and have never needed a water softener. Yes, the kettle gets furred up a bit but you can get a kilo of citric acid for about a fiver on Ebay, and it's enough for about five years. The second house I lived in in London had a water softener. I disconnected it.

Anyway, isn't hard water supposed to be good for your teeth?

We have a water softener, but there's no way I would drink anything with water that's been through it.

 

[Dadam]

According to Yorkshire Water and other sites we live in a medium-hard water area, which I think is ballcocks. Water tastes great, no problems with lathering, never have to descale anything*
After 15 years using the same kettle with no maintenance, there's a slight coating on the heating element.

*Except the tassimo coffee machine but that just runs on a counter of cups brewed.

 

[lazybloke]

I'm almost certainly over thinking this as we have lived with very hard water for decades. Our plumber advised os to tip a teacupful of white vinegar around the stem of our kitchen mixer tap, and I use citric acid to descale the kettle, using the water from that to do the same for the shower head.

Hardness of water varies dramatically, even within the same supply area.
Much of the UK has hard water, sometimes exceptionally/aggressively so. Here in Surrey, all three of my previous addresses supposedly had hard water, yet none was nearly so bad as the house I ve been in since the late 90s.
All had the same water company (SES) and are within about 10 miles from here, so clearly some localised issues. The other addresses were all fed from reservoirs fed by rivers, where as the current address is all from a deep borehole.

I wouldn't go back to unsoftened water here, because every drop of water that evaporated would leave powdery scale deposits that you could see and feel; and keeping on top of the scale was both hard work, and a form of chemical warfare.The deposits also built up in clothes and made soap scums on surfaces and inside of appliances. The old hot water cylinder had several inches of scale and sludge.

One of my first DIY tasks was to fit a water softener, and then to replace all the pipework,
The scale and scum issues are massively reduced,clothes feel better; all cleaning/washing is now easier, more effective, and quicker, using far less detergent and few chemicals. I can really feel the difference when someone (me) forgets to fill the softener!

I wouldn't do without a softener here, but I'd like to move somewhere I wouldn't need one.

It was having the blank canvas of a new kitchen install that got me pondering. With regard to teeth, I think it's the fluoride dosing that is responsible for that.

My water supplier don't add any fluoride as its already present naturally in the hard water.

 

[CXRAndy]

I fitted one of these to my property

Tapworks water softener

 

[geocycle]

Soft Cumbrian water through our taps which makes great tea. There is a lot of local variability depending on geology and water supply routes. I was brought up in York which had terrible limescale from the limestone upstream.

 

[lazybloke]

I fitted one of these to my property

Tapworks water softener

That pictured manifold looks tidy. The way i plumbed in my softener looks like a child did the soldering.

 

[Tenkaykev]

Thank you one and all for the continued advice and relaying your personal experience with several devices. Still a few weeks to go before they start work. Today we ordered the new fridge freezer to arrive midway through the second week of the install.