Quooker - how important/effective is a Scale Control Filter?

itm2

We're planning to buy a Quooker 3XCHR boiling water tap as part of a new kitchen. The supplier is asking whether we want to add a QSC Scale Control Filter to it, to control the build-up of limescale. Does anyone know how important/effective these filters are? They cost about £250. We live in a hard water area - West London (Thames Water). Is this something that we should definitely purchase with the Quooker?

daveyjp

Having seen one in an office after 3 years of use in a soft water area I would say essential.  It was completely blocked with limescale.

In a hard water area I would actually avoid a Quooker.

itm2

daveyjp said:

In a hard water area I would actually avoid a Quooker.

Is that because the limescale would build up too quickly?

Hatrick24

We had a Quooker installed by Quooker last week. We live in Surrey and have hard water, so I had ordered the scale control plus, however, when the Quooker engineer arrived to install the tap he suggested that it was a false economy. He said that the tap should be serviced every two years and part of this would be removing the limescale. We were not completely convinced but in the end, went with his recommendation, as he was a Quooker employee.

nofoollikeold

Probably an ex-employee by now!

Carrot007

Meh, buy the £30 knock offs from ebay/amazon and change it every year. Quids in!

itm2

Carrot007 said:

Meh, buy the £30 knock offs from ebay/amazon and change it every year. Quids in!

Are the £30 filters an alternative to the Scale Control unit. or do they co-exist with it?

Carolam

Just wanted to add our experience to this- we self installed our quooker a year ago and decided against the scale control - we live in Surrey. After a year of use the flow rate suddenly slowed to unusable.
We followed quooker instructions to service the tank - inside the tank was shiny apart from a pile of limescale at the bottom of the tank which must have been blocking the outlet. This was easily rinsed out - and now it’s working fine again. Reused the same filter- so it didn’t cost anything.
We will probably do the same again every year. One of the reasons we decided on quooker was the low maintenance cost if you can do it yourself- high cost upfront of course- but we love it and think it’s been well worth it.

itm2

Carolam said:

Just wanted to add our experience to this- we self installed our quooker a year ago and decided against the scale control - we live in Surrey. After a year of use the flow rate suddenly slowed to unusable.
We followed quooker instructions to service the tank - inside the tank was shiny apart from a pile of limescale at the bottom of the tank which must have been blocking the outlet. This was easily rinsed out - and now it’s working fine again. Reused the same filter- so it didn’t cost anything.
We will probably do the same again every year. One of the reasons we decided on quooker was the low maintenance cost if you can do it yourself- high cost upfront of course- but we love it and think it’s been well worth it.

Thanks for the feedback. I'd be curious to know how your 2nd year goes - i.e. how soon the filter needs to be replaced.

I'm now wondering whether we can simply disconnect the Scale Control Plus and follow the same approach as you - i.e. rinse out the limescale when necessary.

Awakeatnight

Has anyone found a Quooker compatible limescale filter? It would need to have the same compression screw fittings as the Boiling water tank. Don't agree with the comment above that cleaning out the boiling tank every now and then does the trick as you are still using non-filtered water that way.

silvercar

As an alternative, we fitted a water softener and then didn’t see the need for a filter on the quooker.