In article , Brian Gaff
wrote:
You say that, but surely where water is soft already nobody has the
choice. I don't think there should be any problem with softened water,
but I guess if things were not kept working correctly one could end up
with something not very good for you. I covered the magnetic idea
earlier, They cause clumping together of lime scale, and it is still in
the system, somewhere, probably clogging up the pipes!

While hard water, which is what we have (not from Thames), does create
problems for the householder. I suspect that domestic supply is only a tiny
bit of the use of water. You don't need softened water, for instance, to
put out a fire. Centralise softening would put up costs enormously.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England