water softner help in chosing and is this true

Fred_Bear_2

moonrakerz wrote: »

My cheapy water softener (Permutit from B & Q !) was £500 less than the ebay prices for the much vaunted Kinetico 2020c mentioned above.

It uses about 12.5 kg of tablet/granular salt a month. Using prices from an on-line salt dealer this costs me £42 a year.

Who do you buy your salt from moonrakerz? I buy from Homebase and the price has increased a lot.

moonrakerz

Fred_Bear wrote: »

Who do you buy your salt from moonrakerz? I buy from Homebase and the price has increased a lot.

I actually buy from my local agricultural dealer, Countrywide, (probably a bit thin on the ground around you !) and it has risen in price there as well - probably because of all the stuff they were throwing on the roads

I might try on-line, some of the prices there look quite good, but you have to buy 10 bags or so at a time.

H20

Axal Pro tablets are available from £5 per 25 kg bag.

nishinu

hi all,
i live in central london and am looking to buy a water softener for my 3 bed flat because I think it will help my sons skin - he has ezchema.
I have looked at the kinetico - because it is what is used in the trails and has been recommended by friends and family and also had a salesperson visit me from a top of the range company. The prices varied somewhat but with a bit of negotiating I managed to get both installed and a RO filter fitted for around £1500. After reading this thread though it seems like even that is high. I wanted to know if anyone else has installed the softner for skin and if they found any difference and also if anyone has any other recommendations.
It seems like maybe I have missed something and have been looking at paying over the odds for a machine that will do the same thing is a cheaper unit from B&Q.
I don't mind spending money where required or there is a definate gain but I don't want to waste it for bells and whistles that aren't used.
The fact that I live in the flat means I don't have a lot of space. The mains tap comes into a storage cupboard in the middle of the flat and that is where the softner unit would have to go.
I would get an undersink unit for the drinking water - any prices or recommendations here?
I don't plan to be here in this flat long term 2-3 years so I don't feel the need to get a state of the art system but something that will just do the trick and if it works out really well then I can take with me.
Any help would be appreciated as I get more and more confused. I think yesterday I was prepared to pay the figures quoted above but after reading this forum I think I don't need to spend so much.
Thanks.

Doc_N

nishinu wrote: »

hi all,
i live in central london and am looking to buy a water softener for my 3 bed flat because I think it will help my sons skin - he has ezchema.
I have looked at the kinetico..........

I think yesterday I was prepared to pay the figures quoted above but after reading this forum I think I don't need to spend so much.
Thanks.

For what it's worth, I had a Permutit (before the name was acquired by another company) back in the 80s, and it ran and ran without problem. It was still going strong when I replaced it with an Ecowater for the metering system, and that's still going strong after 15 years without any servicing or repairs. Servicing a softener seems a pretty pointless pursuit.

Ecowater have a good reputation both here and in the US. It's single tank only, but unless you're planning to use vast quantities of water in the middle of the night when it regenerates (every few days), that's absolutely no problem at all. Twin tanks are pointless for domestic users. It does have a meter and it also uses information it holds on past usage to predict future usage - that works pretty well to minimise salt consumption.

I can't see how the Kinetico can possibly function as efficiently without electricity, but I could be wrong.

Although I'm very pleased with my Ecowater, and would happily buy another, there's no doubt that they're expensive (around the £1000 mark, plus or minus a bit) and a Permutit from B&Q could well be just as good at less than £500.

By the way - we've found softened water to be excellent for eczema.

Any more thoughts from anyone?

James_W_4

For what it's worth, just been getting quotes for water softeners.

The guy that came round services them for a living and was no salesman. He swears by the Crown/Twintec because he says they are:

• Twin cylinder, meaning less waste and constant soft water
• Uses block salt. The Aquadial Primertech uses granules which are messy and a bit of a nightmare to store.
• Easier to service. He services water softeners for a living and said that you could hardly service the Primertech once it was installed.

The Crown also doesn't use electricity so that saves more.

I think the Primertech is a decent one as well but for the same price I'd go for the Crown. You can get them for £600 (new) from eBay shops etc.

Just my 2 cents...

George_Bray

peshi wrote: »

There is people that give poor advice on this web site.

I must say that I disagree with much of what you say. As some others have pointed out, this thread seems to have become a leading Internet resource for anyone trying to decide which type of softener to purchase. I guess it was only a matter of time before the thread became a bit of a sales arena for traders promoting their over-priced offerings. You may not realise it, but I suggest your whole mind-set has been fogged by the distorted and biased training (talks, presentations, literature; any of it) provided by the water softener manufacturers.

I say again - this area is a minefield for rip-offs. A total budget of around £500 remains valid and anyone who spends £1000 or more on a water softener must need their heads examining. As for B&Q softeners not working very well at a trickle, I bet that if you used one of your test tablets in a house with a B&Q softener and another house with your best softener, there wouldn't be a jot of difference - both houses would have perfectly good softened water. It's just that the lower priced softeners will produce that softened water much more cost-effectively than the products most frequently recommended by traders.

Doc_N

peshi wrote: »

George_Bray is completely wrong

George what do you base your information on?

You are completely wrong about what your saying.
If you do your home work and read the spec on the softeners your talking about and talk to people that service them.

I'm not trying to sell anything just giving good advice with real facts.
I could sell any brand softeners but I stick with the ones that perform well and are hassle free for my customers and myself.
I'm also keen on eco friendly products.
So wasting water and salt with cheap systems isn't good.

I think there's more than a grain of truth in what George says. You've chosen to sell (through P H Softeners/Peshi Ltd) one brand, Kinetico. I don't think that really qualifies you to give unbiased advice. There are plenty of reputable brands out there at a fraction of the price of Kinetico, and you'd need to save several tonnes of salt (which you won't) to make up the vast price difference.

You've also not mentioned in your earlier post one of the other types of softener, as sold by Ecowater, for example (a brand which is no more expensive than Kinetico, but every bit as reliable). With these there's a meter coupled with predictive software which monitors your water usage to prevent regeneration of the resin before it needs to be done. This minimises salt consumption, and the salt usage is likely to be no higher than with a Kinetico.

There is no need for twin tanks. Single chamber softeners are set to regenerate in the middle of the night, so your water supply throughout the day stays softened. With a meter, particularly if it's coupled with predictive software, there will be little wastage of salt, and you will rarely, if ever, run out of softened water.

Kinetico may well be a brand to consider, but they are extraordinarily expensive by comparison with the alternatives, and you could end up wasting a great deal of money.

One other point - Kinetico softeners require special 4 kilo blocks of salt. These are perhaps easier to handle than bags of salt, but kilo for kilo they're much more expensive to buy. So any savings there are on salt usage are likely to be far outweighed by the additional cost of the salt.

baby_frogmella

From a consumers point of view, i completely agree with peshi in that the Kinetico 2020c is the best water softener you can buy. I had one for three and a half years at my previous home in Sittingbourne Kent (one of the worst areas in UK for hard water) and then i sold it last November after moving to Inverness....ironically the water is soooooo soft here (naturally) that i have to activate a special function on my Miele tumble dryer...something to do with very soft water interfering with the machines sensor electronics LOL

For me the biggest selling point of the kinetico was that it gave me soft water 24 hrs a day...other than putting in 2 salt blocks once every 8 weeks, i never had to faff around with the controls...well actually there aren't any external controls! Yes i could have a bought a much cheaper single tank electric unit but i sometimes have a shower at 2am (don't ask why!), sometimes have guests until 3am on w/ends, sometimes my home was unoccupied for 2-3 weeks at a time...so the 2020c was perfect that it only regenerated on demand not every night like the cheaper ones.

As for cost back in 2005 I paid 950 notes for it including installation by local dealer and last year i sold it for 600 quid on ebay....they really do hold their value well.

Yes i did a lot of research before buying and asked quite a few INDEPENDENT local plumbers. All of them said that on average electric softeners tend to develop faults quicker (having more electronics) than their non-electric counterparts. Nearly all of them recommended either the Harveys or the Kinetco non-electric twin tank models.

At the end of the day, yes i paid a premium price for a non-electric twin tank softener but IMO i didn't pay extra for bells and whistles...i paid the going price for a top quality softener which gave me soft water 24 hrs a day. If i liked faffing around with electric controls and having my softener regenerate every night whilst my property was unoccupied, then i definitely would have gone for a 149 quid model from B&Q.

isofa

We are considering a water softener, and find there is much conflicting advice, have a few points and questions!

We live in a very hard water area, limescale builds up on everything quite badly, even though we filter all our water for the kettle (and all cooking), they still fur up regularly. We also would like to investigate having a softener to improve our skin and general well-being, as our skin feels much healthier when we've been to soft water areas.

We had a new en-suite a few years ago, the shower cubical is now caked in limescale, despite weekly cleaning, the bottom of the taps is getter harder to clean, and within a day anything which is chrome has lost it's sheen, all the loos in our house have water marks which are impossible to remove. Cleaning is a real task and nothing we use shifts the limescale thoroughly, from commercial products to vinegar. I fitted a electro-magnetic "water improver" to the main in the kitchen about 2 years ago, and it has made no difference at all, complete waste of £50.

1. What is "regeneration", and why do softeners need to do it - is it to create the softened water in advance, or to clean themselves? Presumably if they are scheduled to do it during the night, this is wasting water. Is this just for single cylinder models, I was hoping the softener could soften water on demand, without wasting water.

2. Based on this "regeneration" and what are the average running costs, salt wise?

3. What are the advantages/disadvantages of single/twin models. (We definitely want one which doesn't need electric.)

4. Do water bills increase noticeably when you have a softener.

5. I'd consider having the cold water tap in the kitchen bypassed, to save having a third "drinking water tap" added to the kitchen sink (naturally along with the outside tap), what are peoples thoughts on this?

6. We have a power shower, and it's used twice a day by 2 of us, so all the water comes from the hot water tank (rather than being heated on demand). The hot water tank (and all piping) has been in the house for 15 years - will softened water help break down the limescale in the tank, or won't it affect it? Will we still see a good softened water coming through the shower, despite the old tank, or will the old limescale deposits interfere with the chemical balance, lessening the softening to a noticeable degree?

7. Central heating - providing if we ever need to drain and re-fill the radiators, is this ok if we bypass the softener, or has everyone with a softner upgraded to a new stainless steel boiler? (Our boiler is also 15 years old, so not the most efficient model by today's standards)

[PS I use both Macs and PCs, professionally and at home and have done since the late 1980s, both have their strengths and weaknesses, neither are perfect, I couldn't manage without both for my varied job!]