whole house water softner or conditioner

rosiepony2003

my Kinetico water softener has broken down (resin tank leaking into water system). I have had it for 26 years and the last time I had an engineer to it was in 2001 so it has served me very well.

I live in a hard water area and after having a water sotener I now desperately need soft water again.

When I bought my kinetico salt water softeners were the only thing on the market but I understand you can now get water conditioners that work through magnetism attached to the water inlet pipe and there is a lot more competition today. I rang Which and they said they haven't done a survey on them because they are all much of a muchness.

At the moment I am thinking of a Kineticop 2020c, a Harveys TwinTec S3 or WaterImp magnetic softner

All firms I telephone swear by their own product. Any advice would be really appreciated:)

macman

The magnetic conditioners do not do remotely the same job as a proper water softener, they are totally different things.
Kinetico's still have the advantage that the flushing frequency is volume controlled, and not timer controlled, so less salt is wasted if for example you are away for a few days. So that's what I'd go for every time.

bobmedley

Agreed - we had a magnetic 'softener' installed by the builder & it was a complete joke. Try and find any studies that prove they work & you will be looking for a long time.

We got an ion exchange softener & it's really effective.

yangptangkipperbang

macman wrote: »

Kinetico's still have the advantage that the flushing frequency is volume controlled, and not timer controlled, so less salt is wasted if for example you are away for a few days. So that's what I'd go for every time.

Be very careful with Kinetico softeners. Many (most, all ??) of them are two cylinder machines and many use block salt.
A twin cylinder machine costs around twice the price of a single cylinder to buy and block salt can be up to 4 times the price of granular salt. Both types will use exactly the same amount of salt to soften a given quantity of water as they use identical processes.
(Just had a quick web search: block salt £22.75 for 24kg. I pay £5.50 for 25 kg of granular - so I don't need to worry about salt being "wasted if for example you are away for a few days"

The small saving in salt consumption which MAY be obtained is lost in the overall costs of buying and running it.
Single cylinder models often require an electrical supply - even if you have to get a power point installed for it you will recoup that cost in the much lower lifetime costs.

Be careful buying a softener - there are more sharks in this business than in Jaws 1,2 & 3 :D

macman

Your source isn't very competitive then, because I can buy 8kg twin blocks for £5.15 delivered-that's £15.45 for 24kg. The Kinetico's can take block salt or granular. I'm assuming that your granular price is based on a bulk pallet order-I only buy 80kg at a time.

SeeJayBee

Hi, We live in an area where the water hardness is 298 mg/l or 21.84° English (Clarke scale).

We have a top of the range Worcester Bosch Greenstar Boiler (installed 3 years ago) which provides hot water to three Shower rooms in the house as well as one Dishwasher and two washing machines. At the time of fitting the boiler the plumber did install a Scalemaster Speedfit Gold Magnetic Limescale Inhibitor.
Recently one of the Shower heads fell apart as a result of Limescale corrosion.

Also our Electric Kettles fur up pretty quickly 

We were advised by one plumber to fit a water softening system which would require us to split the cold / hot supplies, which would cost a lot of money and still not help our kettles as we would fill them from the cold feed.

Another plumber suggested the Combimate which at first glance appears promising but an article online suggested that this would not help reduce scale in our boiler or washing machines.

A third plumber has also advised us of the Fernox Quantomat Mini Water Softener. As we first encountered Fernox back in the early Seventies when we had a microbore (remember them) central heating system installed at our previous property and we remembered how efficient the Fernox product turned out to be we are obviously keen to learn more but no-one is able to provide us with any competent answers so far.

Will we require a Water Softening device – we do not want to waste money on another product that does not produce satisfactory results.

Your honest opinion and advice would be very much appreciated as information sources such as Which do not provide us with any answers and we cannot find any helpful answers elsewhere.

matelodave

We installed a whole house unit four years ago when we refurbished our bungalow - it feeds everything except the outside and kitchen taps. We get through about £18 worth of salt (50kg) a year. We just have a separate water feed to the kitchen tap as everything else is softened.

We have no limescale on anything except the kettle and a little around the kitchen tap which wipes off without any effort. The toilets, basins, shower screen, taps, shower head remain pristine as does the washing machine and dishwasher. We've not had any limescale problems with our heating system either.

It's much nicer to shower and wash in - you really notice when you go somewhere without softened water. Clothing is softer and soap rinses out rather than clogging the fibres.

In my opinion it's one of the best things that we did

thozza

We also have a whole house softener (Tapworks Ultra 9), only the kitchen cold tap is not softened, it works efficiently and quietly, we have no limescale anywhere except the kettle and our water is 19.906 °C Degrees Clark

Salt tablets (not granules) cost around £8.00/25kg (from Mole Valley Farmers) and we use 5 or 6 bags a year for a family of 4.

They are not difficult to install as long as it is near the incoming cold water main. Ours requires power, but this does give the benefit of a number of measures of (frighteningly large) water consumption on the digital display.

We also wouldn't be without it, no more scum in the bath.