I was surprised yesterday to be told that water softeners can be damaging to combi boilers; I'd never come across that before. Googling reveals no unanimity of opinion on the subject and I'd be interested to know what people here think. My combi is a twelve year old Baxi 80e and the softener I'm considering is a Kinetico. I've spoken to Kinetico about the installation and they never mentioned any possible problem, but then perhaps they wouldn't.
Many thanks.
The manual for my Worcester Bosch warns against filling the central heating part with softened water.
No problem - just engage the bypass for the water softener and then run some hot water through to flush out the softened water before filling up the central heating.
There are no warnings about running softened water through the hot water side - you have to fit a water conditioner in hard water areas to prevent scaling up if you don't have a water softener.
HTH
Dave R
Do combi boilers come with a sticker that says 'not for use in soft water areas?'
I think not.
Only issue is pressure reduction but thats cured by using the right size of softener and pipework.
even if it has small connectors, use bigger pipes in and out and adapters.
Ah, but the issue as I understood it is that artificially softened water has properties which the naturally occurring variety does not, and it's these properties which might be damaging in some way.
Ah, so it's only when refilling or topping up the heating system's water that it becomes an issue? That's good news, many thanks.
The same ones that mean you should not drink softened water, perhaps. it has a lot of sodium in it.
Robert
I was going to ask about that. Again, there seem to be several schools of thought, or rather two: it is OK to drink softened water and it isn't.
If you believe the second, isn't there a device which you can plumb in just before the kitchen cold water tap to remove the sodium? But does that have the effect of making the water hard again?
In my case it would be a very major disruption to install a separate branch of the incoming main just to feed a kitchen tap (and an outdoor tap) so the idea of softening all the system has a certain appeal.
In my case, the water softener is beside the storage tank; the kitchen tap and the outside ones are fed from before the device. My CH storage tank get softened water too. It should minimise scaling in the boiler.
sodium carbonate?
hardly the world worst corrosive agent.
obviously fill CV up with correct fernox stuff and so on, but really .......
yeah, about a crisp packet per ten gallons worth.
I am afraid you legally need to do that.
That would be tricky for me to do, simply because of the physical layout of the property: the main comes into the house at the front, runs under the bathroom (three feeds) and then into the kitchen (boiler, sink and washing machine, in that order) and finally the outside tap. There would have to be a lot of doubling-up of the cold water pipe run which would necessitate a pretty major disruption.
I do? It's *illegal* to supply softened water to a kitchen and an outdoor tap?
a kitchen yes.
Outdoor tap, no BUT its a hell of a lot of salt you will be using to water the garden.
Its all this bollocks about 'sodium in the diet' so its a building regulation I think now.
You will need to run a spur to at least the kitchen tap. plastic pipe makes this easier than it used to be.
on further research it seems it 'depends on how hard the water was to start with'...
"Fitment of separate hard water drinking tap is not required by regulation, except in exceptionally hard water areas (above 400mg/l) where the Sodium content of the treated water (increased due to the softening process) exceeds the level laid down in the Water Supply (Water Quality) Regulations 2000. Fitting a separate drinking water tap is currently recommended by the UK Dept of Health, WRAS and the UKWTA."
I am in such an area, and it was mandatory.
Not that in general there is more sodium in a pint of milk that a pint of softened water.
Some people don't like the taste of sodium carbonate, either.
Thanks for the update.
I don't know how to find out the exact hardness of my drinking water: I'll investigate.
Well, according to my water supplier (Affinity Water) the rating for my postcode is 288 mg/l - well below the 400mg/l level which makes a separate unsoftened drinking tap supply mandatory.
So the issues become, would I be OK with the taste of softened water, and would the disruption and costs of installing separate feeds for kitchen sink and outside tap outweigh the cost of using softened water for those places.
Softened water does not "get along with" the chemicals recommended for the system especially if there is an aluminiun heat exchanger.
You're not supposed to drink it either The calcium bit has been replaced with sodium.
Where "a lot" means typically about 1/200 of the recommended maximum daily intake in a glass of water. This is only something to be concerned about if you are on a strict low-sodium diet for medical reasons.
-- Richard
Lets take London's hard water to have a calcium carbonate content of 300mg/l
After softening that would correspond to a sodium content of 140mg/l or a salt content of 350mg/l
So 10 gallons would have 15g of salt.
Does that mean when I buy my multipack of Walkers crisps (23g) I'm paying for 65% salt? Wow!
Or do you have some humongous sized bag in mind!
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.