Drinking hot water from a Combi (revisited)

[David WE Roberts]

I remember reading this fairly recently (although Google Groups suggest it was posted in 2002)!

Concensus seemed to be that it should be O.K. as the water came more or less straight from the mains.

[Water from header tanks is not so good - as I realised after extracting the decaying remains of a mouse from the shower pump. Yech! ]

I went to look back, but couldn't find a recent post.

I was reminded of this when recharging the combi protector - the little unit that treats the water before it goes to the combi to stop it furring up from hard water.

I assume that adding a treatment to hot water might make it less attractive to drink; it is some kind of ion exchange I think. I also assume that combis in hard water areas have to have some kind of water pre-treatment.

It is called a 'Combimate'.

So no, I wont be making tea from the combi.

Cheers

Dave R

[John Rumm]

A combimate is a phosphate dosing unit. It does not soften the water but simply adds a trace amount of a food grade phosphate to the water to stop the scale precipitating out of the water when it is heated (it will still come out on cooling and evaporation)

Won't do you any harm. When I plumbed mine I allowed two routes to the kitchen cold tap (controlled by service valves) to allow the combimate to be included or excluded from the feed. I was interested to see if it would also reduce kettle scale etc. (the answer seems to be "no"). There is no detectable difference it taste etc between the two.

See the combimate FAQ: