"not worth their salt" was the comment from a not-disinterested "pro"
I suspect their main exposure is their backsides in the plumber's merchants.
...until the next heat exchanger is required, anyway.
.andy
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That was clearly price performance, space taken up, etc. That was clear.
LOL, such wonder Little Middle England humour.
Why, do you know about Responses and the scale?
To add to this, there are considerable differences in ion exchange water softeners. The two main differences are the method of regeneration and the flow rates of the system.
Maximum flow rates and pressure drops vary from valve design to valve design. All are suitable for topping up a loft tank. However, a house on a mains pressure system, such as a combi boiler, unvented cylinder, or heat bank must choose wisely to ensure that the pressure drop for the expected flow rate is low, and that the system is capable of performing the ion exchange at such a high flow rate without letting hard ions through.
When installing a high flow rate system, it is best to throw away the washing machine hoses provided and use full bore valves and fixed pipework, leaving only the valve and cylinders to reduce flow rate capacity.
As for the method of regeneration, there are many strategies. The cheapest is to use a timer to regenerate in the middle of the night every 'x' days. The disadvantages of this is that the system may regenerate too frequently when usage is low and run out with usage is high.
A metered system regenerates after a certain amount of water is used. This prevents wastage, but means that regeneration may occur at an inconvenient point and allow hard water through.
A combination system will regenerate during the night after the system is mostly depleted. Some systems of this type are very sophisticated and will predict your usage depending on past usage to determine the best time to regenerate. Some can do a non-full regeneration if they consider it optimum.
The best systems, however, simply have two canisters. When the metering indicates a change, the system swaps over and the depleted canister is regenerated. This gives soft water 24 hours a day and minimum wastage of water and salt. These systems typically cost much more, around the 1000 pounds mark, rather than 500 for a high flow rate sophisticated meter, or
300 for a cheapo timed version.Christian.
And at £5 a month for salt, that's a lot of months before they pay for themselves.
Don't forget the detergent and shampoo savings. That generally mopre than covers the salt cost.
.andy
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You are kidding.
Superficially that is correct. However, my experience is that the washing machine and dishwasher last a lot longer, she doesn't make me descale the taps etc every 6 weeks, the car is easier to wash( not rinse), so I think it's worth it!
By the way, I don't believe the electronic controllers are worthwhile when compared with a crude timer. The chance of buying electronics spares after a few years can be very iffy and if you have a large enough loft tank, the volume of water in the tank may maintain a lower hardness level even if regeneration is a day delayed. Anyway, you soon notice if the soap doesn't lather, and do something about it. Generally, refill it with salt! Regards Capitol
You'll have so much soap you'll use more water to get rid of it.
Nope. I posted calculations on this before based on real numbers. I'm not doing it again. Look on Google Groups if you want to find it.
.andy
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After a short while, you realise that you can use much less and do so.
If you look at the recommended dosings of detergents, it ranges from
2:1 to 3:1 between hard and soft water..andy
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It's not relevant when comparing one ion exchange with another.
Which was I thgink the point under discussion - the complex ones don't soften the water better, they just use less salt.
No, he isn't. Maybe you don't use soap tho.
The Great Unwashed?
You have missed the point. I was comparing the cots of a 1000 quid microprocessor equipped machine with a simple 300 quid 'recharge every week timer' machine.
My point being that all the expensive one does is save on salt.
But you can buy about 140 months of salt with that 700 quid, so if - say
- the 1000 quid one saves half teh salt - at £60 a year on the cheapo, thats £30 quid a year saved for the extra 700 quid. Now to borrow the
700 quid you are probably talking about - say - 6% APR? so it costs you £42 a year to save £30?Its a no brainer.
Precisely. I have one that wasn't too expensive, and does regenerate automatically depending on flow rate. I preprogrammed water hardness in. That seems to be about right. I only notice hardness building up when it runs out of salt.
However if I could have got the flow rate on a cheaper model I would have gone for it. Maybe there is a cheap high reate one out there, but I didn;t come across it.
BTW on electronic descalers, these only ever claimed to stop scaling by adjusting the crystal types of the calcium solids. They don't soften the water as far as soap goes at all. They merely stop (allegedly) hard scale developing - the chalky stuff is supposed to stay in suspension and run out with the waste.
If you want a better wash and less soap, you need ion exchange and thats it.
OK.
.andy
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I have looked at this thread
I am renovating my house and plan to install a completely new gas-fired central heating and hot water plumbing system. The renovation includes a loft conversion, so I want to avoid a system that involves header tanks. I am assuming that this means a sealed system for mains pressure hot water.
The heating system will be underfloor heating (typically 55 deg C), plus supplementary heating (probably conventional radiators at 80 deg C flow) for when the weather turns really cold.
I would like to install a water softener (not a water conditioner) that is compatible with a sealed system and a few on this newgroup have recommended an ion exchange type. Does anyone have a personal experience, successful or otherwise, with a water softener and sealed system that might influence my choice of softener and boiler. What makes of these do you have?
The main supply water pressure at my property is 2.8 bar (measured one February lunchtime). My wife and I have three small children, one bath, two showers and three toilets as well as a frequently-used washing machine and dishwasher. With the old oil-fired vented system we used to have, our water bills show a consumption of about 200 cu.m. per year.
A difficult question I know, but can any expert out there recommend a "dream" boiler-type/storage tank/heat exchanger so that I could start to put together a system specification that has a good chance of working? I would rather err on the side of buying good quality equipment than a cheap solution.
My system:-
Man Micromat / Eco-hometec system boiler Megaflow / Duo-tank stainless steel mains pressure hot water cylinder EcoWater 514 Sensatronic water softener Mixed underfloor / radiator heating system
1 Bath 2 Showers 3 BoysNot cheap but all quality products and work well together (apart from the boys who fight)
Nick Brooks
recommended
Your title says combi, so.. With combi's the most important figure is the flowrate. 11 litres/min is fine for showes and the odd slow filling bath. Here is a recent post of mine...
For an even better flow rate and cheap too for what you get, assess using two Worcester-Bosch Junior combi's.
For high flowrates it is cost effective to use two Juniors and combine the DHW outlets. Worcester-Bosch will supply a drawing on how to do it, or ask me here. Two Juniors are available for around £1000 to £1100 depending on what sized units you buy. They have 24 and 28 kW models, you could use two
24kW or two 28 kW combi's or one of each. That is cheaper than the Worcester HighFlow 18 litres/min floor mounted combi and can deliver about 21.5 litres/min and never run out of hot water. The highest flowrates of any infinitely continuous combi is 22 litres/min, which is the ECO-Hometec which costs near £2K.Have one combi do the downstairs heating on its own programmer/timer (Honeywell CM67 or equiv) and one do upstairs. Natural zoning, so you don't have to heat upstairs when you are not up there saving fuel. The running cost will be approx the same as a condensing boiler heating the whole house. No external zone valves either, and simple wiring up too. The Juniors are simple and don't even have internal 3-way valves.
Also if one goes down you will have another combi to give some heat in the house and DHW too. Combine the outlets for the DHW bath pipes and all the baths you want very quickly and no waiting. Best have the showers on separate combi's. It will do two showers no problem at all.
The Juniors are not condensing combi's, yet overall heating costs will be equivalent to a one condensing boiler as the upstairs will not be heated most of the time.
A win, win, situation.
Its advantages are:
- space saving (releases an airing cupboard). Both can go in the loft, or at the back of the existing airing cupboard.
- never without heat in the house,
- high flowrates (will do two showers and fill a bath in few minutes,
- No waiting for a cylinder to re-heat
- Natural zoning, one does upstairs and one does down
- hardly any electrical control work (running a wire to a programmers/stat and power to each,
- simple no brainer installation,
- minimal components used.
- less piping used
- cheap to run overall as upstairs would be off most of the time
- etc.
Your main issue here is choosing a boiler that can maintain a low flow temperature for the underfloor for efficiency reasons, whilst giving a high temperature to the hot water system and radiators. I believe the MAN Micromat can be set up to do this, and Andy Hall may be able to advise on such a system.
Otherwise, you'll just need to set a high temperature and rely on the underfloor thermostatic mixing valve to produce a low return temperature, which may be enough for reasonable efficiency anyway. Should the Micromat's price put you off, I'm very happy with my Worcester-Bosch Greenstar 28HE, which is a mid-high end boiler at a much lower price.
For frequent baths and superlative multiple showers, install either an unvented hot water cylinder (i.e. Heatrae-Sadia Megaflo) or a heat bank system (i.e. DPS Pandora). If having it installed professionally, you'll find more installers familiar with the unvented cylinders. However, for DIY installation, the heat bank will be an easier job, although will require a higher flow temperature than is optimal.
Your ion exchange water softener should be a high flow type, such as a Kinetico 2020c HF. Whatever you buy should be metered, not timed.
Christian.
Thanks, Nick. I am assuming that you got Eco-hometec to do the design. May I ask if you were pleased with their competence and response? I'm thinking of going to them for a quote.
Did they install the system as well?
Is the Micromat a condensing boiler? I've traced the manufacturer's website
From what I read on this newsgroup, the condensing boiler will not operate at its best efficiency if it has to heat water up to the temperature required for conventional radiators. Any way around this for a mixed underfloor/radiator solution? (Other than doubling the size of the rads!)
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