Water softeners and limescale

[LuckyBenski]

So I'll be refreshing an awful lot of the plumbing in our house this year. Likely to end up being a full replacement job from the feed/stopcock onwards.

Our old place in London was awful for limescale, worse than any other house I've lived in before (always south London). It just seems to attack shower panels and sinks, taps etc and never quite clean off.

The bottom line is, I'd like to treat it at source rather than constantly descale things. I've seen in-line descalers that work on a few different concepts, which sounds ideal. I'd rather avoid an electric softener as it doesn't seem the most environmentally friendly to have a box constantly running if possible.

So fill me in: do in-line systems work? Is it all a pointless endeavour? Am I gonna get kidney stones from drinking my tap water?

FWIW I'm moving from London to Bedford so maybe a bit better but ultimately, a pretty hard water area.

 

[Scuzi]

Kinetico water softener owner here.



This is the heating element from my washing machine after 3 and a half years of daily use. I live in one of the hardest water areas in the country.

It really is a game changer. Showers feel nicer. Water tastes better. Cleaning is magnitudes easier.

 

[Gav_r26]

So I'll be refreshing an awful lot of the plumbing in our house this year. Likely to end up being a full replacement job from the feed/stopcock onwards.

Our old place in London was awful for limescale, worse than any other house I've lived in before (always south London). It just seems to attack shower panels and sinks, taps etc and never quite clean off.

The bottom line is, I'd like to treat it at source rather than constantly descale things. I've seen in-line descalers that work on a few different concepts, which sounds ideal. I'd rather avoid an electric softener as it doesn't seem the most environmentally friendly to have a box constantly running if possible.

So fill me in: do in-line systems work? Is it all a pointless endeavour? Am I gonna get kidney stones from drinking my tap water?

FWIW I'm moving from London to Bedford so maybe a bit better but ultimately, a pretty hard water area.

As someone who lives just north of Bedford I came to this thread looking for solutions as the water and limescale is horendous here ........

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I installed a softener and we drink the water, our hardness is just below the limit where if the ions are replaced by salt ions you would go above the recommended micrograms per litre
My other half solves the issue by mainly drinking wine

It took a week or so to really notice the difference I would say, I guess until then its flushing a lot of loose crud back out.
Now though (2 years on) its night and day. It costs us about £75 a year for salt and we save that practically on cleaning chemicals being more effective.
Far less soap usage etc

If I was really desperate I can get water from the outside tap, its literally 12 inches of copper tube away from the softner inlet so its practically fresh water.

The new taps replaced in the kitchen and bathrooms are still spotless compared to the old ones. No build up of any sorts.
Oh and the shower screen being see through without having to constantly try to get the limescale off is a nice benefit

Ours doesn't use much electric. Its only for pumping some water around when charging.

 

[Finners]

Kinetico water softener owner here.


This is the heating element from my washing machine after 3 and a half years of daily use. I live in one of the hardest water areas in the country.

It really is a game changer. Showers feel nicer. Water tastes better. Cleaning is magnitudes easier.

What sort of price are you looking at for a system like that installed? I'm assuming on the incoming feed to the whole house?

Is there much maintenance or consumables in the system?

 

[LuckyBenski]

Ours doesn't use much electric. Its only for pumping some water around when charging.

This made me feel a bit better, I did some reading and it's a) safer as 12V DC supply and b) uses about 2 watts, for an hour, every time it regenerates (every ~1000L so several days apart probably). Must cost pennies to run.

The new taps replaced in the kitchen and bathrooms are still spotless compared to the old ones. No build up of any sorts.
Oh and the shower screen being see through without having to constantly try to get the limescale off is a nice benefit

This is the dream! My current shower screen was installed 2019 and the builders left one panel inside out. The anti-scale coating is therefore missing and it was a mess within 6 months. I've never managed to get it back to normal since.

Starting to do my reading... Looks like £5-600 for the unit so not AWFUL.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

This made me feel a bit better, I did some reading and it's a) safer as 12V DC supply and b) uses about 2 watts, for an hour, every time it regenerates (every ~1000L so several days apart probably). Must cost pennies to run.



This is the dream! My current shower screen was installed 2019 and the builders left one panel inside out. The anti-scale coating is therefore missing and it was a mess within 6 months. I've never managed to get it back to normal since.

Starting to do my reading... Looks like £5-600 for the unit so not AWFUL.

There is vast differences in price but the main part in them all is basically the same. A kind of "lung" type thing where the ion replacement takes place.
You can get cleaner (assume some sort of descaler) but not looked into that yet.

The biggest issue remains finding a home for them imo

 

[LuckyBenski]

The biggest issue remains finding a home for them imo

Agree, that's why I'm glad some are at least not mains powered. In my case the main water inlet is a small bathroom by the front door, where it's not easy to fit extra pipes or boxes. Kitchen and boiler are upstairs so a bit of a faff to re-plumb the system with the feed starting up there.

So - small would be nice. Twin tank apparently better for drinking. Cheap and reliable... Probably interchangeable?

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Agree, that's why I'm glad some are at least not mains powered. In my case the main water inlet is a small bathroom by the front door, where it's not easy to fit extra pipes or boxes. Kitchen and boiler are upstairs so a bit of a faff to re-plumb the system with the feed starting up there.

So - small would be nice. Twin tank apparently better for drinking. Cheap and reliable... Probably interchangeable?

Dunno

I think the smallest are around the size of a "carry on" suitcase mines a little larger.
Biggest issue was the depth with some meaty unflexible flexible pipes I had to take the hoses behind the cupboard in order to get enough depth.
I would be very careful in that regard in future.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Get a proper salt based softener would be my advice. Specifically a metered one that only recharges when it needs to. Yes they need power but it’s tiny, it just runs the meter and opens a few solenoids to start the recharging process.

As far as I am aware, the fundamental element that does the softening is the same regardless of brand. I wouldn’t bother spending a load on big brand, they are incredibly expensive. just get one from Amazon/screwfix/wherever else and get your plumber to install it. One that covers a normal sized house shouldn’t cost more than £500.

Check your local tap water on your suppliers site and the manufacturers instructions, that will tell you if you need a hard water tap for drinking water.

We are in a very hard water area and the taps, shower screen etc. are spotless. We need a separate drinking water tap but as a part of the same kitchen refurb we put in a 4 way boiling water tap. The standard hot/cold side is softened and the boiling and filtered side is hard for drinking.

 

[Scuzi]

What sort of price are you looking at for a system like that installed? I'm assuming on the incoming feed to the whole house?

Is there much maintenance or consumables in the system?

It’s this one:

Premier Compact Water Softener

Kinetico Premier compact water softener for your home, offers outstanding performance, efficiency, suitable for up to 3 bathrooms & 10 year parts warranty, with 0% finance available.

www.kinetico.co.uk

I paid around £1500 installed back in 2019 and that came with a load of bags of salt blocks.

No maintenance required. Just replenish the salt whenever it runs low. Currently going through a pair of salt blocks (1 bag at £9.50) every 3 weeks in a house of 4 people, 3 bathrooms. So £165ish per year to run and it easily saves that in maintenance, soap, cleaning products etc.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

found mine its this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009SOYMTE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[b0rn2sk8]

found mine its this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009SOYMTE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Snap.

Just to add to my post, block salt is more expensive per KG than standard tablet salt. The only advantage of block salt is that it is faster to refill but really we are talking about seconds per month.

You can get 75-80% of a bag of tablet salt into that softener linked above and it lasts for weeks and weeks between fills so it’s not like you need to fill it regularly.

 

[Kainz]

Back in 2020 when I bought my small flat, one of the first things I did was to look into water softeners as my parents house 10mins down the road had dreadful hard water and I spent my life forever looking at hard water damage on taps and boilers. I didn't want to get into that same situation in my new place.

Since it was lockdown, it was hard finding someone to install a standalone device I'd seen on Amazon (the green one linked above) so I went with Harveys and paid around £1800, which included a separate hard water tap+filter for the kitchen and some blocks of salt along with installation.

3yrs down the road, and it is amongst one of the best purchases I've ever made. No longer do we have to clean the shower screen, or taps and nothing scales up ie the kettle, or my espresso machine. It also tastes awesome when chilled so I drink it loads, my wife hates it however.

I buy my salt from https://www.puresalt.co.uk/. My wife burns through our blocks like crazy though as she uses far too much water in the bathroom, whereas for me the blocks could last a month easily, instead of two-three weeks that they normally do. Years down the road I am still not sure if you can use tablet salt pellet things as mentioned in the post above me.

As a side note, I would NOT recommend Harveys at present unless you can get the older machines that use salt blocks. Their new ones use blocks of 'curved' salt, which is a 'lock in' into the customer buying salt only for them. Stupid practice imo.

 

[Freefaller]

I'm just popping in here as I'm sort of interested in this too. I believe you should leave 1 tap (i.e. kitchen tap) untreated as the salt content can be unhealthy in particular for young children? Or is that no longer a worry? I'm not so bothered about the drinking water more about the appliances that require heating elements, and of course having a nice lathery shower!

 

[throwaway4372]

Yep I've got a Harvey's it really works. Expensive to install and run but it does work. I have an untreated tap for drinking water, the treated water tastes worse. I use treated water for the kettle and that's fine.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

£1,800… that’s absolutely mental.

You shouldn’t be paying more than £500 for a unit and most can be DIY fit if you are mildly competent with plumbing or paying a plumber for a few hours to fit it.

It will be a bit more if you need a drinking water tap added.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

Kinetico water softener owner here.



This is the heating element from my washing machine after 3 and a half years of daily use. I live in one of the hardest water areas in the country.

It really is a game changer. Showers feel nicer. Water tastes better. Cleaning is magnitudes easier.

Same here, hardly any limescale anywhere and so easy to replace the salt blocks that last a good bit too.

We have a brita tap that takes a feed from the untreated water, that is then filtered for drinking.

Compared to our place that doesn’t have such a system, the difference is night and day and worth every penny.

 

[gort]

Live in a very hard water area and have a softener. Not used it for ages after we ran out of salt and never got round to replacing it.
It did get rid of limescale but can't say I notice any real difference in the water itself for washing and drinking.
Having lived in a hard water area all my life just something I'm used to and can't say I l'd pay to get a softener installed. Our house had it fitted when we moved in so gave it a try.

 

[happy_2008]

I have a Harveys Minimax 2 and its brilliant. However, i would say that the salt usage really depends on the hardness of the water and how much water you use. I'm based in the south east close to london and the water here is really hard. We tend to go through 2 blocks of salt in 2 weeks! I do tend to bulk order my salt to save money though, last bulk i bought were for 30 packs at £135