Reply With QuoteI made you a cup a few weeks ago you cheeky bastard.Originally Posted by seikopath
Anyone had a water softening system fitted? I haven't had a decent cup of tea in ten years , except for that one at Dave's house which was fantastic
Last edited by seikopath; 22nd July 2016 at 21:49.
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
I made you a cup a few weeks ago you cheeky bastard.
You can't drink water from most softeners AFAIK.
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
- Bender Bending Rodríguez
True. Original post edited.
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
Yes. We had a system at the previous matrimonial home. It was a Kinetico, and used salt blocks. I believe that the cost of the system we had was somewhere north of £2k, but I won it in a competition.
Basically, it did what it was supposed to. Don't believe the baloney about it saving enough in shampoo and shower gel etc to cover the costs, but it does mean that you don't need to keep descaling stuff.
If it's a just decent cup of tea you crave, how about a Brita filter jug?
I looked into this a few years back as we live in a very hard water area (east midlands). It seemed at the time the only way to soften water was by fitting a machine to your main water line into the house that dosed the water with a salt solution effectively turning it into a brine. The other thing to note was that you had to have at least one tap, normally the kitchen, which wasn't fed from the softener that would provide untreated water for drinking / cooking etc. Which really doesn't help the crap cup of tea thing but stops build up round the ends of taps. Don't know if there are other solutions to this these days
I've done the filter jug thing a couple of times, it usually works for a while then the jug gets relegated to the cupboard that is full of mismatched tupperware
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
Mine says hi.
Cheers..
Jase
I use a Brita water jug - filters work out about a euro per week. I use the water for everything - tea, drinking water and cooking. In fact, if I use tap water in a saucepan to cook pasta or boil an egg there is a white ring on the ceramic hob afterwards, with water from the Brita - nothing. As drinking water it tastes nice too.
See also: Brita Tap Water Filtration Systems. I've not used them myself, but I do use a jug for my tea and coffee.
We had one fitted last year when we had the kitchen done. For us it's been really good.
Showers and bath stay clean after you use them and are generally easier to keep clean. We use the softened water in the kettle and the inside of the kettle still looks new whereas they used to scale up every few months. The untreated water tap is really for drinking water. You should also really have an untreated feed for any outside taps as that is better for the plants etc.
Ours is about £900 new if you just buy it on its own, but doesn't use any electricity. Relatively compact and made to fit into a cupboard and uses salt blocks that are about £5 pack and last about a month, depending on how much water you use.
Well worth it in my experience and the tea is a lot better.
Cheers
The salt doesn't affect the water. The water is de-calciumified by other stuff (possibly ceramic balls - it's been a while, so I've forgotten the exact process). Periodically, the system cleans the calcium from the ceramic balls by back-washing it with the salt solution.
We solved the requirement for having one tap for untreated water by making it the outside tap. There's nothing to say that it has to be in the house.
I once had a water treatment jug that had a little silver paddle on it that stirred the water for a certain amount of time.
The water came out tasting fantastic. You actually wanted to drink more of it, whereas with our normal tap water you don't actually want to drink any of it unless you are really thirsty or add apple juice concentrate to it, in which case it isn't actually water anymore.
I might try and hunt one out again. They really are remarkable machines.
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
We have had softeners for about 12 years now.
The first machine lasted about 10 years and was a "timed" machine using tablet salt. When it packed up we replaced it with a "metered" unit using block salt.
My understanding is that the salt is used to produce brine which is used to clean the filtered impurities from the resin bed. The salt plays no part in the actual softening process. That is done by forcing the hard water through a bed (cylinder) which is full of resin beads. I know this to be true because when the first unit failed I had to spend 2 days unblocking the water inlets on washing machine, dishwasher, spa jets etc etc.
Softened water does not taste salty but might have traces as a result of the bed cleaning process. A separate drinking tap used to be specified but that is not required with modern machines. That said, the softened water does not taste "right" to me so I rely on a Brita type jug filtering hard water for tea etc.
The tap water here is like liquid chalk and the softener does all that is claimed of them for me.
I would not be without one in a hard water area.
I am not a plumber and I do not sell water softeners!
Better David, better. :)
Rather than a separate Brita jug, if it's just a decent cuppa you're after why not get a Brita kettle?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Russell-Hob.../dp/B008HS4HOW
Because i'm really , really happy with my current kettle
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
Okay, fair enough!
I'm seriously really happy with my kettle. I would Bang on about it for an hour but I don't want to upset Chris with more mumsnet type content
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
So do my four
not true - had a softener for 5 years and makes a massive difference but no harm in drinking it but it is preferable if you have one non softened outlet for drinking (ours is the water from the fridge)
Stand corrected, thank you. Like I say it was a good few years ago I looked into it but based on this I may look again.
Good to know, thanks
Forgot to say, the water from the drinking tap goes through a filter cartridge as well so it's like having a Brita jug always available.
Cheers
Not quite true, there are sodium ions in the softened water and it will taste more salty and is not good for plants hence the need for a dedicated drinking and outside taps. I also believe that it's recommend that folk with high blood pressure don't drink softened water
http://watersoftenerfacts.ca/how-softeners-work/
"Most water softeners on the market are ion exchange systems. In these systems, hardness ions (calcium and magnesium) are exchanged for salt (sodium or potassium) ions. The exchange takes place within the resin tank of the water softener. When water flows through the tank it comes in contact with small resin beads that are covered with salt ions. As water flows through the resin beads, hardness ions trade places with salt ions, hence the higher salt content in softened water."
I see that you've linked to a Canadian site. See Can I Drink Softened Water? from UK Water Services for:
In the USA, there is no limit on sodium in the National Primary or Secondary Drinking Water Regulations.
In the new, Third Edition of the World Health Organisation’s Guidelines on Drinking Water Quality, 2003, there is no sodium guideline. It only states that concentrations in excess of 200 mg/l may impart a taste.
...
It is the UK Department of Health that suggests limiting sodium to 200mg/l in drinking water for babies and those individuals on a sodium free diet.
Give me some facts and figures?
Let’s compare the sodium content of a glass of typical London water that has been softened with that of other foods & drinks in our diet:...
...
Scientific & Regulatory Support Information
The World Health Organisation
"No firm conclusions can be drawn concerning the possible association between sodium in drinking-water and the occurrence of hypertension. Therefore no health- based guideline value is therefore proposed. However, concentrations in excess of 200 mg/l may give rise to unacceptable taste."
I only found that after searching for advice from the British Heart Foundation, the NHS and the Department of Health. I also found this DH webpage: Safe water in healthcare premises (HTM 04-01), that contains this advice:
Softeners using salt-regenerated ion-exchange resins increase the sodium content of the water during softening, and this may be undesirable for children and infants (including the making up of babies’ bottles) and anyone on strict salt-restricted diets.
...and this:
6.6 Epidemiological studies have shown that the incidence of cardiovascular disease tends to be higher in areas with soft water supplies than in areas with hard water supplies. The association is clearest where the soft water supplies contain hardness below about 150 mg/L (as CaCO3). The explanation is not known, but it is considered prudent, where possible, not to drink water that has been artificially softened to concentrations lower than this. [Part A Chapter 6]
I conclude that there in not, in general, a problem with drinking softened water...and I have a heart problem.
Agreed but the purpose of the salt is to regenerate the resin, its not added to the water on purpose, in fact the resin is rinsed with water going to waste immediately after the regeneration takes place.
Perhaps I'm wrong, hence I used believe rather that delivered as a fact, personally I don't like the taste of softened water, so don't drink it.
Really? I believed that resin is regenerated with the salt solution and once recharged the incoming water is fed through the resin where the mineral deposits are exchanged with the sodium ions on the resin, once depleted the resin is regenerated again and so the cycle goes on.
Thats how my twin vessel softener works.
I am about to install one of these so a timely thread if there ever was one.
Question please for those who already use one: does it has a negative impact on the flow of water (Pressure in the shower)?
Not in my case, happily running a megaflo storage tank fed from ours, showers are fine.
It's a twin vessel mechanical unit so only recharges as needed rather than on a timer. Use £5-10 of salt in blocks per month season dependent
Thanks for that. I have a combi boiler so no storage tank. I am going for a twin tank one as well (kinetico 2020c HF)
Exactly the same for me although the plumber (who also installed the mega-flo and the mains booster tank) ensured the flow rate would be sufficient for my potential maximum water flow.
Try Lenor. Works wonders....
We inherited a water softener when we bought our house last year - apparently North Norfolk has very hard water and it does seem to stop everything scaling up. Interestingly, after we moved in my eldest son seemed to be drinking a huge amount of water - and getting up in the night complaining of thirst. I realised he'd ignored (or hadn't been listening to!) My advice to only drink water from the drinking water tap in the kitchen. As soon as he stopped drinking from the softened tap he felt fine, the thirst disappeared etc. I also had the system (about 5 years old, uses salt tablets) serviced a couple of months ago and the engineer did say it is best not to drink the softened water. After my sons experience I'm sticking to the drinking tap!!
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Ours (Kinetico) has 3/4 inch inlet/outlet pipes so doesn't reduce flow at all.
Thank you. good to know that the flow is not reduced (significantly) by going through the resin.
Move north to God's own country. All soft water up here.
Tea using softened water tastes awful. Usually one tap is left as hard water. Filtered hard water, on the other hand, makes great tea.
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