drinking soft water?

[bs]

I live in hard water area and I am thinking of getting a water softener..... the type that uses salt. To keep this short....I would not be able to take an "untreated" pipe to my kitchen sink.

SO I/we would have to drink the processed "soft" water.

Would this be ok........from a safety and taste point of view?

Not too much info out there on the net on this specific area. I would love the joys of kettles that didn't fur up...lots of soapy suds and chrome taps that don't look tatty after a while.........ah!!!! I hate hard water!

But can I drink the soft stuff

thanks

Barry

[Lloyd and Sarah]

Water softener companies always advice having at least one hard water (untreated tap) Water softeners of the traditional type (the ones with salt) do regular rinses with the salt water which will increase the level of sodium in the tap. To be honest with you I would try and have one untreated tap, for health and also for tast, IMHO!

Cheers

softener.....

[EricP]

The flavour of the month was that hard water mitigated heart problems. Based on lower heart problems in hard water areas.

But then the same people expect you to keel over dead from eating a chip.......

[Paul Saunders]

No way should you drink artificially softened water as the sodium content is quite high and would almost certainly give you more intake than the recommended limits. I can also speak from experience on this as I had a water softener back in the early 80's and then there was no recommendation to put in a separate tap. In fact, in the sales pitch they used to tell you how much less tea and coffee you can use compared with hard water. At the time my son was a few months old and he continually suffered really bad constipation. Just a few months after, there was a feature on 'That's life' with other people having the same problem with their young children. Since this was highlighted water softeners have always been sold with the recommendation of having a un-softened supply for drinking. You could try one of the electronic water conditioners. These obviously don't soften the water but it helps to suspend the calcium particles so they tend not to stick on the surfaces of kettles and the like Of course you still get some scale but it's easier to remove.

"bs" wrote in message news: [e-mail]...

[Gel]

and of course you need untreated tap for gardening purposes. Odd drink from softened tap no harm, but all that sodium bad for blood pressure.

[John]

We have the water softener under the sink (a good but expensive one that doesn't need an electrcity supply). This supplies the boiler, washing machine, dishwasher, shower etc and the hot tap at the kitchen sink - so most of the washing-up water is softened. The kitchen cold tap is straight from the main and we also have a drinking water filter plumbed off the cold water supply feeding a small tap next to the sink.

I've heard that softened water has increased levels of sodium so not good for blood pressure.

softener.....

[~¤WIZARD¤~]

It's normal to have a little tap fitted to your sink to give you untreated water, this is normally tee'd of from your existing pipe work before the bypass plumbing is added so I doubt would take up any more room.

I did drink softend water for a couple of years, didn't notice any problems but it's not recomended.