David WE Roberts wrote:

I assume that adding a treatment to hot water might make it less
attractive to drink; it is some kind of ion exchange I think. I also
assume that combis in hard water areas have to have some kind of water
pre-treatment.

It is called a 'Combimate'.

A combimate is a phosphate dosing unit. It does not soften the water but
simply adds a trace amount of a food grade phosphate to the water to
stop the scale precipitating out of the water when it is heated (it will
still come out on cooling and evaporation)

So no, I wont be making tea from the combi.

Won't do you any harm. When I plumbed mine I allowed two routes to the
kitchen cold tap (controlled by service valves) to allow the combimate
to be included or excluded from the feed. I was interested to see if it
would also reduce kettle scale etc. (the answer seems to be "no"). There
is no detectable difference it taste etc between the two.

See the combimate FAQ:

http://www.cistermiser.co.uk/faq/combi_faq.shtm

--
Cheers,

John.

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