duztee

Ok, so I have spent some time reading various articles. some from the obviously bias water softener companies and a lot of reports commissioned by US states.

A water softener will definitely improve your washing experience, soap will lather much better and you should have nice shiny hair, also you will not suffer from lime scale.

But, and there always is a but.
As Peter said Treated water is not harmful to drink (except in very rare medical conditions) but it is also not good, depriving the body of useful minerals, and if fed to indoor plants the build up of salts will almost certainly kill them off. (which might or might not tell you something!)
Some American states prohibit there use because the build up of flushed salts into the municipal drainage system can result in soil, plant and marine damage.

The best advice seems to be that if you do wish to install a water softener then it should be plumbed into the feed of the water heater only and leave the cold water supply untreated.
This means that you will get nice showers and healthy drinking water. but! you will still get lime scale in the kettle , unless you fill it from the hot tap, which just seems Yuck. and the washing machine probably works off a single cold water supply so will still suffer problems.

So is it worth the hassle of installing and cost of operating, I am reaching the conclusion that it is probably not.

fidobsa

If you have the usual single lever mixer tap in the kitchen you probably are getting some water from the hot supply when you fill the kettle unless you let it run for a few seconds before offering up the kettle. I think you could run the washing machine on the softened water but how easy that would be plumbing wise will depend on the relative locations of the different bits of equipment. I would take more heed of UK sites than US ones as you get more common sense advice from a less litigious culture. The DIYnot site can be quite good for plumbing advice:

DIY - Home Improvement - Do It Yourself - DIYnot.com

almafak

I seem to recall that there are two main types of water softener: The first type, ion-exchange, replaces calcium ions with sodium ions. It needs lots of common salt to regenerate the resin bed. With this system it is better to have a separate carbon filter for drinking and cooking purposes. By contrast, reverse-osmosis systems use a membrane and a high pressure pump to separate out the metal ions.

wolfi

Ion exchange is crap, as duztee describes - (sodium)salt obviously is no good, neither for people, animals nor for plants!

Afaik reverse-osmosis systems use a lot of energy ...

We've arranged ourselves with the situation, using additives for the washing machine (Calgon etc) and cleaning kettles, coffee makers etc regularly - Tesco just had an offer for 20% vinegar at 139 HUF/litre ...

It's still better then using water from a well. Maybe I've told the sad story already:

Here in the neighbouring village of Zalaszánto a doc found an unusually high occurrence of cancer of the intestines some years ago which he reported to the county.
They realised that the reason for this was the poisoned water from the wells - the Aluminium works in Tapolca had let their soiled water into the ground for many years ...
Luckily they were closed down after the fall of Communism.

And younger people were not hurt, because the village had got a water supply some years ago - but all the older people were asked to bring a stool sample to their docs ...
Don't know how many cases were found in the end, I think the whole affair was hushed down a bit.

duztee

Well it would appear this topic is now dead in the water.
Two companies have been to look at the house and neither can tell where the water enters the house, so a whole house treatment is not possible (I was not really interested in this anyway)

Hot water can be treated, unfortunately there is no drain anywhere near where they would need to site the equipment. so a costly and disruptive installation on top of the basic cost.

fidobsa

That reminds me of when I was trying to work out where the water enters my place and I gave up in the end and ran a new supply into the summer kitchen. I capped off the old pipe outside underground but did eventually find the pipe routing when I ripped out all the old iron pipework in the bathroom. It runs under the concrete floor of the bathroom then up a channel in the brickwork of the internal wall between bathroom and kitchen. When I got the place the only way to turn off the water involved lifting a huge manhole cover which would take 3 men or a tractor to lift! I suppose they made the cover from 6" thick concrete so it could withstand being driven over by tractors, as it is in the middle of the central courtyard enclosed by house, garage and assorted farm buildings.