Hard water - not filtered by water board?

[Max Demian]

Why?

You can buy iodised salt in areas with no iodine deficiency.

[Tim Streater]

No, it's how you tell the hardness of your local water, so you can properly adjust how often the water softener regenerates.

[mcp]

I was only visiting and it was cheap.

[Graham.]

Can you explain that to me please? I would have thought in a healthy human in the UK, an iodine deficiency would result from his dietary choices, not geography.

[Martin Brown]

Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

[Martin Brown]

Like that shit Dasani where they took many gallons of potable London tapwater and turning it into expensive overpriced "bottled water" that wasn't fit to drink because of high bromates. London water couldn't believe their luck when they analysed this new designer product ROFL!

It bombed almost immediately in the UK and never recovered.

[Martin Brown]

Only if you add a vast excess.

Aluminium sulphate is usually used to flocculate other unwanted fines suspended in the water prior to filtering. Normally both the aluminium and other unwanted contaminants are removed by the filters.

When things go badly wrong at a water treatment plant you can have serious trouble as happened once at Camelford in 1988

[Rod Speed]

Like hell they do.

Like hell they do.

[Rod Speed]

He doesn't have one.

Neither of you do anything like living.

[Rod Speed]

Yep.

Nope.

Basically metal was cheaper.

[Rod Speed]

Run two houses otherwise identical, one with the snake oil device and the other without it, see if it makes any difference to the identical kettles and pipes etc for years.

Sure, but trivial To do. And trivial to automate boiling a kettle every half hour and see if there is any difference after 6 months etc.

Trivial to weigh them before and after the 6 months etc.

Again, easy to automate that test too.

[NY]

I don't know. I've never lived anywhere that had a water softener. I've tended to accept whatever water comes out of the tap.

[Roger Hayter]

That is true now. But was not true before dairy farmers routinely corrected the geographical deficiency. See Derbyshire neck.

[Max Demian]

There's plenty in seaweed, but this isn't part of a normal English diet.

I didn't know farmers fed dairy cows iodine-rich feed. When did this start? Presumably at one time all they ate was grass and clover.

[Clive Arthur]

A conductor (water) moving in a magnetic field?

Cheers

[James Wilkinson Sword]

[Roger Hayter]

It started when they realised cows in Derbyshire (etc.) thrived better with iodine supplements. I imagine the iodide was an additive, used since some time early in the twentieth century. Now dairy produce is our main source, especially in low iodine parts of the country. I think we have been feeding cows with something other than grass in winter for thousands of years. Nowadays mainly commercial feeds and root crops. See mad cow disease.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

Contrarywise. I found the old style ones leaked more, usually where the electricity went in at the bottom. There was a rubber seal around the element where it was bolted to the framework. The new flat element cordless kettles don't seem to suffer form this problem.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

My dishwasher annoyingly has a bright red warning light when the salt softener has run out. I painted over it.

[Tim Streater]

Thank you, that may help.