Water softener and shower rail corrosion

Dec 18, 2014 6 Replies

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David 11 years ago

New bathroom two years ago with new shower. Water softener fitted at the same time.

This morning an end stop covering the screw hole where the bottom of the shower rail is screwed to the wall just fell out. After some puzzlement I realised that the plastic shell had split at the top. As far as I can tell the plastic has been forced apart by some kind of corrosion of the metal shower rail which provides up and down slidiness for the shower head.

Hopefully you can see from the photo that there is corrosion around the rail and also a load of corrosion inside the bracket (presumably from water running down the pole and collecting inside the bracket). The split is at the top of the bracket in line with the vertical hollow rod.

So - Google suggests that softening water reduces corrosion. OTOH the WB manual says not to fill the CH with softened water - presumably to protect the heat exchanger.

Has anyone else experienced corrosion of softer metals (I am assuming aluminium or something similar) with softened water? Something brought on by an excess of Sodium ions?

Cheers

Dave R

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Brian Gaff 11 years ago

Actually, how do you clean it? I seem to recall a little light in my brain coming on about cleaning products that corrode the items if not removed completely, and if they can dribble insside a heidden area, it could be that some caustic substance has vgot in and started it off. Brian

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David 11 years ago

Interesting thought.

Thanks

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Huge 11 years ago

No. We have a water softener and two shower cubicles made of aluminium and I've never seen any corrosion, despite them being > 10 years old.

OTOH, the corrosion of the chromium plated brass shower heads was much reduced when I replaced the previous water softener with one that worked. Before that they had copper oxide stalagtites hanging from them.

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Syd Rumpo 11 years ago

Was the one that didn't work just broken, or was it a different type/chemistry?

Ironic, (and I don't mean ferrous) as Copper Oxide is used in anti-fouling (and I don't mean birds) paint.

Cheers

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Huge 11 years ago

The former. It went bang and I didn't bother doing anything about it, other than disconnecting it, for a while.

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David 11 years ago

It is virtually impossible to "brush against" the fitting. To be clear, it is not the end cap that is the problem but the plastic part that touches the wall and covers the fixing that hold the bottom of the metal riser to the wall. This is as shown in the picture with the split from the edge to the metal tube as 12-o-clock. The picture doesn't clearly show the extent of the corrosion but there is significant corrosion between the plastic fitting and the metal down tube. This is what lead me to conclude that the expansion of the corrosion had forced the plastic apart.

Cheers

Dave R

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