"Peter Parry" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 00:55:13 GMT, EricP
wrote:


As I am faced with shelling out a packet for one of these things, the
subject is serious to me.

I have always thought them a joke, I am told they are not.

Your first opinion was right. Some permanent magnet ones used in
recirculating industrial applications (where the majority of the
water is pumped through the device many times) do appear to have some
ability to stop scale adhesion to pipes. There is no objective
evidence that the electronic ones do anything at all to water.

Mine works. And those large Dutch commercial units I saw 20 odd years ago
certainly worked.

This matter (as you will probably discover!) has been done over many
times. I once set up a small test rig to try a variety of devices
and found the electronic gizmos had no effect at all, the magnetic
ones had no observable effect if the water went through them once
but a barely noticeable effect if you pumped the same water through
them time and time again.

There is simply no comparison between these things and an
ion-exchange softener.

But many of them work.