On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 16:33:00 -0000, "Christian McArdle"
wrote:

Can you now just buy a Kinetico over the counter, or do you have to
ask some otherwise unemployed scrote to come over and case the joint
for a "survey" and then sell you one with a 400% mark up and "free"
fitting?

I've just answered my own question. However, it still costs over a grand.

The same website offers a Autotrol based on a "255 valve" apparently. This
is a single cylinder metered with 2am regeneration.

There are quite a number of Autotrol based products around that work
in this way. Generally they are larger since the principle is that
they should meet your needs for 24 hours.

There are varying levels of control as well. Some will measure the
water used and make a yes/no decision on whether to regenerate at the
nominated time. Others vary the amount of regeneration based on the
amount of water used. Some valves allow you to adjust the brine
dosing rate (i.e. amount of salt used ) to match the degree of water
hardness.


It uses approximately 2.5kg of salt per regeneration to produce 2,500 litres
(14 litres resin). Is this reasonable economy? Are the figures believable? I
suppose the salt consumption would be slightly higher as it has to
regenerate before the cylinder expires. I guess this cylinder will last
about a week.

The degree of hardness of the water has a bearing on this. Some
specs I've seen are at 200ppm, others 300ppm. You ucan get a tablet
based test kit from B&Q to measure hardness.

I don't have metered water, neither do I measure the flow or volume.
However, to give you an idea, in a household of 4, I get through a
25kg bag of salt about every 3-4 weeks.


At half the price of the Kinetico, I'm tempted. However, do you think it
will pass 40lpm without dropping excessive pressure, like the Kinetico
claims to? I'm totally on mains pressure, not a tank in the place (except
the heat bank).

The valve specifications show the flow/pressure drop graphs for the
valve only. Obviously the resin tank(s) and hoses have an impact,
which is why wide bore hoses are recommended. Logically, I would
expect a larger tank to have a lower resistance to flow, but this
would need to be checked.



Strangely, they also offer a Crown softener, which offers the "unique"
features of non-electrical metering and twin resin cylinders. Yeaaaahhhsss
(think Paxman). It takes block salt, so is automatically disqualified from
my list.

You may find that when pressed, they will admit that it will use
pebble salt as well. There can be an issue with some machines that
they can't work with granular salt, because generally there is some
kind of filtering arrangement around the brine collection with
machines that will take granular salt so that undissolved grains can't
be sucked into the valve. Pebble salt is more like blocks in this
respect.


Christian.


..andy

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