which water treatment to get?

[kevineaton]

hi guys and girls, hope all is well. hope you can help....

i am looking to get a water treatment system for my 4 bed house. have very hard water here (bracknell, berks) and limescale is bunging everything up..washing machine, boiler etc.

water system is as follows: have a potterton puma 100e combi boiler which powers the hot water and feeds radiator central heating.

have done a bit of web research and see that there seems to be several ways to treat water....
a)salt based water softener
b)permanant/electric magnectic ioniser.

from the looks of it, the magnetic systems seem to be a lot cheaper to buy and run. but i dont anything about these things so i would appreciate

1) opinions on both types of system, or any other systems i dont know about....

2) particular brands/models of each system that are your favourite...

i havent got lots of money to throw at this , 300 quid tops.

i have seen this system 30
will it do the job??

thanks for your help

cheers
kev

[Paveway]

I've a few customers who swear by their 'Scalewatcher" magnetic type devices and a further few who say they do nothing at all.

If you want a magnetic type one that costs nothing to run, you can get one from B & Q which clamps around your incoming cold main (check there's a long enough bit of pipe for it to fit on first) for about £25. That's what I'd start with.

The wire wound ones that plug in to the mains simply create a magnetic field the same as the clamp on magnets as far as I know.

I've only one customer whose system definitely works and that's a proper self-regenerating water softening machine which she bought for £900 (reduced from £1400!) at the Ideal Home Exhibition in 2003.

I hope this is a bit of use but beware the snake oil salesmen (if you get my drift - it's a bit like damp-proofing/timber treatment etc).

Cheers,

Joe.

Not a civil servant!

[MarkK]

Hi Kevin,

I have just written a pretty lengthy response to your post, but this has disappeared from the site!

Are you still looking for advice on this?

Regards
Mark

[kevineaton]

hi guys, hope all is well.
sorry for the delay in posting, but have been in hospital for the last week.

yes, i would still like info on these devices, all advice gratefully recieved, thanks!
cheers
kev

[oranges]

Hi want some advice about which watersoftner to fit, a monarch watersoftner, or waterside lc 25 for a unvented system there are 8 people in the house. thanks for your help.

[MarkK]

Hi Kev,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, but I have been on holiday (lucky me). I wrote an in-depth reply to Pete on "Advice On Softener Model" 22-08-05 which may be of help to you if you want to take a look at it.
Although you're not looking for a megaflow compatible softener, the same things apply in respect of the systems that will work as opposed to those that are "said" to produce results.
Without singling out any particular manufacturers, I can confidently say that you get what you pay for. The main area's that produce problems are the control valves - And there are a lot of Softeners available on the market whereby little or no attention is paid to this. The cheaper the Softener, potentially the less reliable the control valve. Unfortunately, due to reliability issues, I don't really know which is the most reliable low cost water softener as we just don't fit them. But I have seen some for under £100 at local merchants who just want to rid themselves of stock - Who can go wrong with that? It's practically disposable if it goes wrong out of warranty! If you've got a megaflow system on the other hand, don't even bother with a cheap softener - They're just not able to cope with the demand.

Take a look on e-bay & see what you can get.

As for "Oranges" question regarding which water softener to buy depends upon what hot water system are you running? And with 8 people in the house, the two softeners seem unlikely to be able to cope. If you would like further help with this, I will need to look up the two spec. sheets. Do you have them handy?

Regards
Mark

[kevineaton]

hope you had a good holiday mark. welcome back to the land of grey...im sure you are loving it.

well, thanks for your replies guys. i've read the post referenced in markK's last message..very informative, but and i would love to avoid getting a salt based softener because of expense and also because its going to be tricky to put it on the rising main without adding lots of plumbing.

what i would really like to know is if i am wasting my time (well...i mean money) buying a magnetic or radar based "softener" like the one displayed on the following link

http://www.emwc.uk.com/details.asp?productID=86

if they do work, does anybody have any brand advice / preferences?

look forward to your reply

cheers
kev




















This message was edited by kevineaton on 9-12-05 @ 6:50 PM