Hard Water Question

spfeno

Hi there,

was looking at getting a water imp attached to the mains. Gas anyone had any experience with anything like this ?

http://www.waterimp.co.uk/bce with these

whassupp2

We got a different type of water softener.
It basically looks like a bin which you fill with salt. The salt bags can be bought at hardware shops in 20kg bags for €5 each. The system works well and the quality of the water is much more noticeable in the shower and how the lather forms on soap.
The only downside is the price. It was very expensive and I'm not sure it was worth it.
We also retained a supply of "hard" water at the kitchen sink. This is used for drinking as I believe the harder water tastes nicer and is healthier.:D

DublinWriter

whassupp2 wrote:

We also retained a supply of "hard" water at the kitchen sink. This is used for drinking as I believe the harder water tastes nicer and is healthier.:D

I disagree. Out here in Meath the water tastes like wee-wee. I invested in one of those Brita filters and the difference is like night and day.

Pocari Sweat

The definitive answer to the "Water Imp" question is this;

They are a worthless piece of junk.

Companies selling products like Water Imps for sorting out limescale are like many companies that try to sell miracle weight loss tablets to turn a fat people into thin people etc.

There are commercial products using the "physical water conditioning" technology with high quality magnetic coils that often cost between 5,000 to 10,000 euros which can reduce with a reasonable degree the scale build up in the hot water feeds pipes directly before the water calorifiers or hot water tanks of hotels, but have a lesser effect the longer the pipe runs and do not tend to work on the cold fed mains.

The cheap water imp like boxes made in taiwan for 5 euros and sold for daft money from 100 to 500 euros, do little to nothing to sort out the effect of scale in domestic water systems. There is a cast iron guarantee they do not actually remove lime, they are not designed to do so and the usual problems with heavy washing powder and detergent use with hard water are not sorted out, also lime scale splatter on kitchen sinks, sanitory surfaces, shower enclosures etc, is not reduced one bit.

Companies selling these, have to beef up their selly tales and come out with all sorts of jargon and claims.

The big tales are these quotes from the water imp site;

This has been confirmed by analysis of both total dissolved solids and conductivity in parallel trials using a simulated domestic hot water / radiator heating system.

To blow their claims out of the water here, they are suggesting "total dissolved solids" (effectively talking about limescale) - problems in a radiator heating system. Houses with water fed radiators, have the same re-circulated water going around in a closed circuit, this standard plumbing set up is not constantly fed from new hard water daily, allowing lime to build up inside the radiators as ongoing accrued deposits. They are talking crap.

So the morons selling these devices are lying to their customers.

The Super Imp has prevented the deposition of about 10 mg of scale/day for 30cm length of 1 inch pipe under the conditions tested.

This company is trying to suggest a one foot length of 1" pipe has had successful results in lime scale reduction placed directly after the super imp model which again you pay more money for the the other heap of trash the "elf" model.

Two things;

Limescale hard water comes in through 1/2 inch pipework domestically and tees off to a garden tap and kitchen cold tap and then runs to a header tank usually, where 1/2 inch and 3/4 inch pipe runs are used to feed all hot and cold domestic fed daily water consumption throughout the house.

What the feck are they testing it on 1" pipe for? I'll tell ye, the increased surface area will give them a higher false claim for scale reduction than normal pipework people relate to with scale issues.

Also it is only 1 foot of it stuck on to one of their their premium cost rip off units and the hundreds of feet of pipe feeds needed to be tested in a household are not being tested, as the further away each foot of pipe, the less effect of the unit, until the already useless scale reduction claims at short range are totally useless elsewhere in the house.

In the harder counties of Ireland, water schemes often encounter 400 mg of lime per litre of water, and an average house uses around 700 litres of water, which would be 280,000 mgs of lime passing through the system and a certain amount of this deposited on pipework and heating elements etc.

A salt based water softener has no problem in totally removing lime at very hard levels leaving the water virtually lime free, from even 600 mg per litre or more down to 1 or 2 mgs per litre, no problem, where 50 mgs per litre is considered soft water by the EPA.

These rip off water imp products are total horseshít, don't waste your money.


As for filtering water for drinking, get a reverse osmosis filter for the most superior contaminant free water and scale free kettles, saucepans, glasses, cups etc.

Hard water filters will only feck all of these up, and the taste issue is just a matter of taste, RO water is perfectly safe water, at its purest and it actually tastes of pure water nothing less.

Considering plumbing extra hard water feed lines, will only confuse your average plumber, who will have little knowledge of filtering systems and it may end up that he starts plumbing yer cold feeds to kitchen and utility sinks, even some appliances with hard water, if the house is a new build, leaving you with a headache and having a water softener that you have paid for, not to be put to its full use.

up for anything

Ok, you've lost me there, Pocari.

I'm just finishing a new build in an extremely hard (lime) water area. Apparently some of the residents go through a washing machine a year/an electric shower every couple of years. I was considering getting 'a company' to fit some sort of 'doohicky' onto the water pipe where it feeds into the house. I'm not sure who to get to do it, what to ask them to do or whether it'll work? Any advice would be appreciated. I haven't done any research beyond ringing all the local companies I could find in the Yellow Pages (don't even remember what category I looked them up under) and leaving messages on their ansaphones, none of which were returned.:mad:

rooferPete

Hi,

Maybe this will help, I have seen similar products installed in a few minutes with fantastic looking guarantees and I am going back before they could be printed off a P.C. because the P.C. wasn't invented.

If the P.C. and the internet had been around a lot of people would have saved their money reading Pocari's post.

Careful wording on the web site appears to be their protection.

.

up for anything

Anyone got an idea as to whether this is a 'kosher' product or not?

Pocari Sweat

up for anything, I may have gone into a bit of detail with the water imp, but in short, they are a fake 5 dollar made small plastic box with 2 wires that wrap around your mains pipe, and have no effect in removing lime or reducing lime deposits to a point that will make any difference to the damage hard water makes in the household.

Buy one with a written guarantee from an established company you feel ok with, see if it makes much difference over the guarantee period, and when you get your refund back, ask me about water softening appliances. I have a number of posts in detail about water softening in this forum, but in short they range from around 600 to 900 supplied, 900 to 1,200 fitted and will operate for about 30 years trouble free with 10 yearly main services, and operate on about 70 euro worth of salt a year.

They save roughly 200 to 300 euros a year on household damage and waste of detergents and avoid hard water inflaming exzema and psoriasis or affecting dry skin adversely like hard water often does.

spfeno

Thank you Pocari - IMP idea given the 'oul heave ho

Fair play to you !!!