On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:46:43 +0000, rjs wrote:

Can anyone offer any advice and guidance?

Water Conditioners - Mostly fall into one of three types.

Polyphosphate dosers - Work much the same as Calgon powder and add
small amounts of a chemical to the water to reduce scale formation.
They do not "soften" the water. Need replenishment of the chemical
periodically (about every 6-12 months). This is straightforward and
usually involves just replacing a small cartridge.

Magnetic - No evidence they work in single pass (domestic)
environments but some that they do in industrial recirculation
systems.

Electronic - No evidence they work at all, none have ever been shown
to work in properly conducted tests. No credible theory why or how
they could work.

None of these soften the water and none will significantly (or at
all) affect scale deposits on tap outlets. The Polyphosphate dosers
will reduce scale build up in pipes.

Water companies tend to encourage use of any of the above as
irrespective of whether they work or not none increase water
consumption which means the water companies don't have to worry quite
so much about repairing all their leaking pipes.

Water Softeners - One of three types

Electrolysis - almost unknown in the UK.

Reverse Osmosis - Rarely used except where water purification is
also needed (eg for treating river or well water).

Ion Exchange - the traditional unit where an ion exchange resin is
used to swap calcium for sodium. The result is water which has most
of the properties of water in soft water regions. Increases the
amount of sodium in the water and the kitchen tap is normally plumbed
to take water from before the softener or a separate untreated water
tap is provided. In the hardest water area in the UK the amount of
Sodium added by softening if you obtained all your drinking and
cooking water via the softener is somewhat less than you would get
from eating 1 slice of bread.

If you have a combi boiler you need to watch the maximum flow rate as
many water softeners won't cope. Some combi boiler manufacturers
also recommend against using a water softener with their boilers.

Softeners come in three types - those that regenerate on a timer at a
set time (usually at night), those that meter the water and
regenerate when needed and those that have twin resin containers and
switch between them. Conventional advertising wisdom ranks these in
the order listed with the twin cylinder being "best". The fact it is
also the most expensive is of course as irrelevant as a peerage to a
nulabor donor. In practice there is very little difference between
the efficacy, salt or water usage of the three types.

http://www.colemanwater.co.uk/html/c...on_framset.htm is a
comparison of some softeners water and salt consumption.

Most water softeners use resins produced by 3M (even those that claim
to manufacture there own usually simply repackage 3M resins).
Changes in the law in California where the water is very hard,
softeners are common and water consumption is very high, have led to
more efficient resins being produced but few have found their way to
the UK where most manufacturers still use the older and less
efficient resins.

Prices rarely bear any relationship to quality and almost none to
capability but a lot to marketing. Companies such as Kinetico will
give the salesman about GBP250 for selling you a GBP1000 machine so
selling tends to be fairly high pressure. Much of the information on
manufacturers and retailers web sites is best described as
overstated.

It pays to shop around as the markup is so high. If you can find a
supplier fairly well down the supply line a unit costing GBP900 at
retail should be obtainable for about GBP250-300. Even eBay has some
small suppliers selling new equipment at quite reasonable prices.

Plumbing in can be a bit complicated depending where the existing
water main is and where pipes run. You should spend some time
planning where the thing is going to go bearing in mind you need to
get salt to it fairly frequently (once a week or more).

Beware of much information on US sites. The Americans have
significantly different systems and issues, for example high iron
content is a major and common problem in many US borehole wells but
almost irrelevant in the UK.




--
Peter Parry.
http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/