Hard water: what it is and where it is
Dissolved calcium and magnesium picked up from chalk and limestone. Why the south and east get the hardest water, how to tell without a test kit, and why it is a nuisance rather than a health risk.
Read →Are water softeners worth it?
What ion exchange actually does, the drain and the salt nobody mentions at the point of sale, and the four things that decide whether the sums work.
Read →Block, tablet or granular salt
All the same chemical, three shapes, and the machine decides which. Plus the one rule that saves a resin bed: never table salt, never rock salt.
Read →Water filters for the home
Jug, tap-mounted, under-sink and reverse osmosis, compared on what each removes and what each costs per litre rather than on the shelf price.
Read →Softening and filtering are not the same job
A softener is plumbed into the incoming main and treats the whole house, so limescale stops forming in the pipework, the cylinder and the heating elements. A filter treats water at one tap so it tastes better. Neither does the other's job, and the sales conversation for both tends to blur them.
The practical version: furred kettle and scaly taps point at a softener; chlorine taste points at a filter; wanting both means buying both, and a filter is far the cheaper of the two to try first.
On drinking water safety
Public drinking water in the UK is regulated and tested to standards no domestic appliance is asked to meet. Nothing on these pages is a suggestion that tap water is unsafe, and any product sold on that basis is being sold on the wrong argument.