Boring thread alert - Hard Water help

anksta

anksta

anksta

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Anyone live in a hard water area?

I live in London now and use a brita filter thing for drinking water and just descale the kettle every now and then but want something for the shower now.

The definition of hard water is too much calcium and magnesium carbonates but then when you look for a shower filter, all of them say they're great at removing chlorine.

Now I'm no chemist but what does that have to do with removing the calcium and magnesium? Do I want a chlorine filter or am I looking for the wrong thing?

Anyone help?

Cheers
 
I wouldn't bother with filters. You would be better off with a water softener but again I personally wouldn't bother with that either as I've never had a problem with the hard water here.
 
Kettles will fur up, hot water tanks too eventually. Other than that I wouldn't worry about it. Water softeners are ok for appliances but I wouldn't drink it due to high sodium levels as you're drinking salt water basically. Calcium (chalk) in hard water on the other hand is harmless.
 
When we lived in West London the water was far harder than even Hertfordshire. It appears it was actually affecting peoples teeth (including mine) it was that hard.

But generally, as mentioned it just means you have to scrub the shower a bit harder and look after your kettle.
 
We're in Hertfordshire and the water is utter garbage. Brita jug filters last maybe 2-3 weeks before they need replacing. When we move, the kitchen we're going to has 2 sinks. One is in small area that's going to become my coffee area. Instead of a brita filter we're going with a BWT Bestmax Premium filter. Not cheap, but excellent.

Going to rig it to a single cold water tap (which is proving surprisingly hard to find) as the other half will drink it, I'll use it in the kettle and the espresso machine. One of the push button taps would annoy the hell out of me.

I also wouldn't pull the all the magnesium out, hell, the BWT filters actually add some back in.
 
I ended up buying this posh looking filter thing for 25 quid, supposed to soften and dechlorinate the water but we'll see. I want one because I have eczema, never really had it before but almost every day now my eyes are like sandpaper all round. Tried a bunch of different things even from the gp then I got a leaflet through the door yesterday, it was just from some sales company but it said hard water can cause eczema to worsen so I wondered whether this could be the cause.

Not asking for medical advice just wanted to give a bit of context
 
Blackjack Davy said:
Kettles will fur up, hot water tanks too eventually. Other than that I wouldn't worry about it. Water softeners are ok for appliances but I wouldn't drink it due to high sodium levels as you're drinking salt water basically. Calcium (chalk) in hard water on the other hand is harmless.
Click to expand...

Rubbish! There is not a high sodium level!
 
Blackjack Davy said:
Water softeners are ok for appliances but I wouldn't drink it due to high sodium levels as you're drinking salt water basically.
Click to expand...

This is absolute nonsense, the softening process uses salt but it doesn't turn the water salty.

If it does, the softener is broken.

(if you want to be specific, the salt isn't used directly, the softening is done with ion exchange resin, the salt is used to regenerate the resin)
 
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Kenai said:
This is absolute nonsense, the softening process uses salt but it doesn't turn the water salty.

If it does, the softener is broken.

(if you want to be specific, the salt isn't used directly, the softening is done with ion exchange resin, the salt is used to regenerate the resin)
Click to expand...

Any reason most places with water softness have specific plumbing for the drinking taps that bypass the softener then?
 
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