one thing that came out of my Central Heating quote from British Gas is that the combi. would need a cartridge scale preventer.
I have since seen these in Homebase as well.
So there is a cartridge which treats the incoming mains water and takes out the scale producing stuff before the water flows through the combi - seems reasonable because otherwise it would 'fur' up pretty quickly with our very hard water.
What is not clear is how this differs in end result from a water softener.
The constraints seem the same - no drinking of treated water.
You can also get cartridge water filters for drinking water (instead of using a filter jug). Filter jugs seem to prevent kettles scaling up etc.so presumably the cartridge water filter does the same.
So now I have three technologies; cartidge scale preventer (not drinking water), cartridge water filter (drinking water) and filter jug which all seem to prevent scale when the water is heated/boiled.
Do you still need a water softener if you are fitting a combi boiler?
If you are talking about a phosphate dosing cartridge then no. All it does is add a food grade polyphosphate to the water to prevent the scale precipitating out of the water when it is heated. The scale is not removed.
Easy, it does not soften the water - at all. A water softener removes the calcium carbonate ions from the water (and replaces them with sodium ions)
With most you can drink the water without any harmfull effects since the additive is a food grade one. The combimate that I use does not seem to affect the taste of the water either as far as I can tell.
Indeed you can...
The better ones don't. A good filter should leave the mineral content of the water unchanged - it is better for you that way. The downside being no reduction in hard scale deposition on heating (although you should get less floating film/scum)
In practice the phosphate dosers will not do anything drammatic for your kettle alas. Especially as when you tip the water out of it when it is still hot, you will get scale deposited by evaporation of the remaining water.
Assuming you have some reliable mechanism in place to protect the combi, then you do not need a softener.
You get soft water... no scale deposition on either heating or evaporation, so surfaces that get wet stay shiny and don't get chalk like surface marking. No limescale buildup on taps, or the loo and other sanitaryware. Reduction in quantities of detergent used. Better lathering of soaps etc.
The downsides are it can be harder to rinse away soap/detergent, if you drink it you lose any cardiaovascular benefits from hard water. There may also be some concern over the increased sodium content if you are on a low sodium diet, and you need to take care not to feed it to babies etc. The softeners also increase water consumption since some is required for the flushing / regen cycle that prepares the resin matrix used in the ion exchange process. If you don't choose / plumb carefully you may get a reduction in mains flow rate (same applies to combimate type devices as well mind you).
On Sat, 3 Jun 2006 12:07:43 +0100, David W.E. Roberts wrote (in article ):
David
I'm sorry but you are a regular reader of this newsgroup.
I am sure that you know that Google Groups provides quite a useful tool to search the archives of threads going back years, even though it is completely useless as a means of reading them on a regular basis or posting.
Discussion about water softeners, treatment devices and snake oil devices comes up at least every 2-3 months and the questions that you asked have been covered in great detail by myself and others on many occasions.
If you do a search on Google Groups - advance search and only in uk.d-i-y for the keywords "water softener" you will find that there are 546 articles - the last ones during May.
I did give you a courteous response which contained pretty much all of the information that is germane to your question except perhaps for the comments that John made about limescale on sanitaryware and more detailed comments on possible but unlikely health aspects.
I don't mind spending time giving detailed responses, and regularly do when it is a new poster who can't reasonably expected to look first, but it does get tiring when it is the same old stuff over again.
Really there is not much excuse for a regular reader not to take a quick look at the archives first, is there? It's not even as though it's a difficult search to make....... You even get a bunch of commercially sponsored links to purveyors of everything from proper water softeners to the magnetic toys.
On Sat, 3 Jun 2006 14:17:26 +0100, David W.E. Roberts wrote (in article ):
David
If you thought that that was rude, then I'm sorry.
I certainly was not feeling grumpy at all and thought this quite restrained. If I had really wanted to be rude I would have been a lot more forthright than that.
The first line was intended as a mild chide that you hadn't taken the trouble to look in the obvious places first and was followed by a reasonable set of comments for your question.
I certainly don't go out of my way to upset people for the sake of it; however this is Usenet where the rules are few and not a Sunday school outing.
If you google back you will find the Andy has in the past posted more detail on this than perhaps anyone else. This is a fairly well done to death FAQ so perhaps he was suffering repetition fatigue ;-)
My mate got offered a scale preventer for his combi bolier whilst it was being serviced as "it would prevent it scaling up and make servicing cheaper in the future". A cost of £320 was quoted.
Guy still didn't change his tune when my mate pointed out that he already has a proper salt water softener softening the water so doesn't get scale.
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