On Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:07:20 +0100, Invisible Man wrote:

The only way of stopping it is to fit a water softener.

And to those who cant see the point in them, the fact that
plumbing
lasts 5-10 times longer, and isn't cheap, is a handy reason to put
one
in.

I'll second that. Time saved cleaning is huge - only the drinking water
tap to remind me what scale and watermarks are about.

Depends where you are and how hard your water is. When we lived in St
Albans it was hard and full of odd metal minerals as well, the kettle
would need descaling every few weeks and the scale was some lovely
colours of green and blue, borehole water I think. When we moved up
here the descale time went out to 6 months or so and the scale was
pure white. That water came from an addit in the limestone hillside
1/2 a mile away. They then put in a new supply fromk Burnhope
Reservior, we don't descale the kettle at all now. There is soft
brown deposit but it doesn't build up like scale does.

I was under the impression that really soft water is worse for the
plumbing as it will slowly dissolve the copper, copper that is not
protected by a layer of scale...

--
Cheers
Dave.