We live in a very hard water area, on the White Cliifs of Dover, and for obvious reasons want to install a water softener. I had planned to fit a salt tablet type with a third fresh water tap to the kitchen sink. However, I was looking last night on the interweb of a electronic one by a company call Eddy. It consists of a mains plug in unit with coils that wrap around the incoming mains supply, sounds ideal but before I shell out £134.00 has anyone had any experience of them or other solutions to water softening. I really don't want gimmicks just a reliable permanent solution to hard water.
We used to have a salt tank softener, held I guess 2-3 gallons of water, once a month you turfed in a big bag of salt crystals.
Had to remove when going combi boiler, insufficient flow.
[Edited on 11/9/16 by mark chandler]
You can get them much cheaper than that, we have one and it seems to work. But if you read up on them there are many that say don't waist your money.
We live in east anglia which has some of the hardest water in the country. We have had a lot of problems with pipes furring up so tried several solutions starting with a magnetic thing that you put in line in the water supply. Non worked until we installed a proper water softener. It is brilliant. It takes the water from 380 ppm to zero when measuring the water hardness. Mine is a twin tank non-electrical one so one tank refreshes whist the other is in use so there is no down time. We use tablet salt but it will take block salt, it uses about 3kg salt each week. Expensive but brilliant!
The one we had took water at mains pressure, dropped it in to a ball cock controlled tank with salt added by electronics, it lived under the kitchen
sink where the mains supply came in. It then pumped the softened water into the loft header tank.
We could have pumped water at shower pressure from this tank to the combi boiler I guess and kept the water softening system.
It was not overly expensive on salt as the electronics monitored the water and added as required.
[Edited on 11/9/16 by mark chandler]
I'm in East Anglia too, very hard around here.
When we moved in to our house there was a wire wrapped type installed. The water was still hard, so I removed it, sold it on and the water is still
the same.
So I am in the camp of the electrical ones don't work.
I know of a couple of people who have the salt type and they both say they are good.
quote:
Originally posted by mark chandler
Had to remove when going combi boiler, insufficient flow.
[Edited on 11/9/16 by mark chandler]
the magnetic things round the pipe - if you ask me after trying one, did nothing at all, tjo mine I am sure would have been less than 50quid.
we have a water softener, no electrics, 2 units within so when it is recharging you still get soft. doesn't restrict our flow, but then we
don't have a lot here! (have a combi and no probs whats so ever)
it is one of these:
http://www.twintec.com/
ours is the s2, s3 looks like just a newer model.
the flow rates are pretty big, but check yourself.
my dad had one for years, thus why I followed and got the same. we use ~2 blocks of salt every 4 weeks. 2 adults, 2 under 5s.
would be easy to plumb in yourself.
ps ours is 12+ yrs old and still working as well as the day it was installed. (how it works and hasn't worn out, I need to read up on again!)
[Edited on 11/9/16 by Chris_Xtreme]