water softner help in chosing and is this true

manda1205

frankie wrote: »

Had a plumber round working on some rads and asked him about softners. He said they were a good idea but to be very careful where to site them In his opinion under the sink is not always best due to the weight buckling the carcass floor and the high humidity they generate rots out the MDF carcass. He's been in situations where this has happened.

Any one had issues with these sort of problems?

I don't know about humidity, other than I've never noticed any condensation in our cupboard, but we have insulated all our hot and cold pipes now. As for the weight of them, we put some spare legs in the middle of our carcass when we were fitting our kitchen, below where the softener sits, to help take the weight of the softener. It does say in the fitting instructions to put in extra support to the carcass.

cavok

One of the main reasons I would like to fit a water softener is to stop getting all the crud in the kettle (see-through body, looks awful) This would mean filling said kettle from softened supply and then making tea/coffee - in other words drinking it. But them what knows say you shouldn't drink softened water else you will die. Can anyone shed light on this for me?

Doc_N

frankie wrote: »

Had a plumber round working on some rads and asked him about softners. He said they were a good idea but to be very careful where to site them In his opinion under the sink is not always best due to the weight buckling the carcass floor and the high humidity they generate rots out the MDF carcass. He's been in situations where this has happened.

Any one had issues with these sort of problems?

The weight is certainly an issue - not just because of the softener, but because of the weight of the salt and water within it.

Humidity? New one on me. Basically, cold water flows into the salt every few days, creates brine, and that washes through the resin in the tank. No hot water, or even warm water, so no evaporation, and the whole thing's enclosed so there should be no salt splashes.

I see no reason why humidity levels should be affected in any way.

Doc_N

cavok wrote: »

One of the main reasons I would like to fit a water softener is to stop getting all the crud in the kettle (see-through body, looks awful) This would mean filling said kettle from softened supply and then making tea/coffee - in other words drinking it. But them what knows say you shouldn't drink softened water else you will die. Can anyone shed light on this for me?

All (or at least most) recommendations are that you should not use the softened supply for drinking water because of the higher than normal sodium salts it contains. I'd heed that advice. It's given for a reason.

How about one of these as an alternative:

http://www.sesi.uk.com/product-info/

michaels

Doc_N wrote: »

Humidity? New one on me. Basically, cold water flows into the salt every few days, creates brine, and that washes through the resin in the tank. No hot water, or even warm water, so no evaporation, and the whole thing's enclosed so there should be no salt splashes.

I see no reason why humidity levels should be affected in any way.

All the cold water (except drinking) flows through the softener, at this time of year it is pretty chilly when it comes into the house so is liable to cause any humidity already in the house to condense onto the cold softener/feed pipes. IN an mdf cabinet this might then cause it to 'rot'.

Doc_N

michaels wrote: »

All the cold water (except drinking) flows through the softener, at this time of year it is pretty chilly when it comes into the house so is liable to cause any humidity already in the house to condense onto the cold softener/feed pipes. IN an mdf cabinet this might then cause it to 'rot'.

That certainly makes sense. Not so much 'generating' the humidity as causing the humidity already there to condense out. Much as a WC can in a humid bathroom.

brumster

In response to my original dull and boring post (735). I can report back that I've spent quite a bit of time and done plenty of investigating of all the softeners in the £400-500 bracket


The price differential of water used is a couple of pounds max per year and the difference in salt is probably in going to cost you a maximum of 20 quid per annum. I have the calculations available, if anyone is interested PM me and I'll send the spreadsheet over (I've done this one to death).


In the end I went for the Coral 15-litre Water Save at a cost of £400 which has the Autotrol Logix 255-762 valve which gets a good write up here.

brumster

Sheet uploaded and available here: http: // sdrv.ms / 1aIebCL


Apologies I can't provide a link as a new user.

RubiconCSL

Okay, if anyone is interested, after much deliberation, we eventually took the plunge a few weeks ago. And, what a difference! After an initial evening spent de-scaling the flat, I cannot believe the difference. The shower is still spotless - all I do is make sure I wash the screens down after use; no cleaning agents other than the water. I can even see a reflection of the under cabinet lights on the worktop in the kitchen.

Anyway, that aside, who did we go for in the end? Well, I really did try shopping around and could have bought a cheaper one than the one we went for. However, finding a plumber who would answer an email and who would state that he really knew about water softeners and would actually give a price proved impossible. So I was left with two suppliers in the end. One was from East Midlands Water company and we got it down to two of their offerings:-

http://www.emwc.uk.com/Details.asp?ProductID=1459
http://www.emwc.uk.com/Details.asp?ProductID=424

The other was EW Technologies. They had two again, one timer and one metered. As my use of the flat is quite irratic, I really wanted the metered one - which of course was more expensive.

Now EMWC were going to be around £400 in the end, to which I had to add an unknown amount for a plumber (they couldn't recommend one in London).

EWT came in at £760 installed, plus a promise of no further costs, no matter how complicated the installation became. They also threw in a water filter for the kitchen sink.

So, I bottled it and went for the EWT one. I managed to get one more flat in the building to join me, so we each got £50 cashback (well, the cheques are being posted this Friday). So it came in at £710: timered machine, installed and then no hassles if we have any problems, with the supplier blaming the plumber and vice versa.

The installation went smoothly. The plumber was very efficient and friendly. Everything was perfectly tidy afterwards.

Their salt costs £9 a bag, but if you buy 5, you get one free, so works out at £7.50 a bag - which looks to be competitive.

They have a "cover plan", which I'm not yet sure about. It's about £94 per year, which includes 5 bags of salt and a new drinking filter (which they say is £70 otherwise) and it extends the warranty by a further year, each year.

So, not the cheapest (but I don't know about plumber costs otherwise). But, it works splendidly and did go very smoothly. EWT are very approachable too and reply to emails quickly.

So there you go, I hope this helps.

Oh and if you go for one, let me know first, as we could then both get the referral £50 back each That's not spam by the way!

michaels

The vlaves etc can be a big issue, we went for an unvented system having checked that our 2.5 bar 45l/minute was adequate forgetting that we measured at 11AM not 7AM when everyone is having a shower. This means at that time our supply is pretty poor (complained to the water co who fitted a monitor for a week and said the minimum reading was 1.02 bar and they only have to supply more than 1 bar) so it matters a lot to us that the softener impedes the flow as little as possible.

With salt we get it from Wickes, when we first got the softener 3? years ago it was 5.99 for 25kg - 2 weeks ago it was 9.99