No-salt water softener

[Bert Coules]

Has anyone here used one of these no-salt water softeners?

http://www.centralheat.co.uk/monarch-scaleout-no-salt-water-softener-s15t.html

short version:

http://tinyurl.com/zn93kl9

"Almost all the benefits of fully softened water" is the claim, and at a
much lower price.

Many thanks.

[Bert Coules]

As a hasty follow-up I've just discovered these online reviews:

http://www.reviewcentre.com/Water-Utility/Monarch-Scaleout-reviews_1808794#Reviews

short version:

http://tinyurl.com/jhemw7o

most of which are not encouraging.

[Andy Burns]

Bert Coules wrote:

> Has anyone here used one of these no-salt water softeners?
> http://www.centralheat.co.uk/monarch-scaleout-no-salt-water-softener-s15t.html

It seems to be a plumbed-in equivalent of a Brita filter, I use the
latter for the coffee machine and to make ice cubes, but it will only
reduce, not eliminate, limescale. Therefore it may not have the
expected benefits for a whole-house installation.

[Peter Parry]

http://www.chem1.com/CQ/catscams.html may be useful.

[Rod Speed]

Bert Coules <ma...@bertcoules.co.uk> wrote

When they don't bother to spell out how it works, and don't
provide any chemical analysis of the water before and after...

Someone must have done some tests on their system.

[Rod Speed]

Bert Coules <ma...@bertcoules.co.uk> wrote

None of those have a proper chemical analysis
of the water before and after the alleged softener
over time and that is completely trivial to do.

[Brian Gaff]

Sounds like snake oil to me. If you remove the limescale it has to go
somewhere, and that place is probably going to be in the pipework of the non
salt softener, or shock horror, its all abig con.
Brian

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[dennis@home]

On 04/12/2016 10:49, Brian Gaff wrote:
> Sounds like snake oil to me. If you remove the limescale it has to go
> somewhere, and that place is probably going to be in the pipework of the non
> salt softener, or shock horror, its all abig con.
> Brian
>

You can soften water chemically.
Washing powders used to do so using phosphates.
They were reduced/removed because of the environmental damage they do
when they get into the rivers.
I wouldn't be surprised if they had phosphate blocks in the machine that
slowly dissolve over a year or two.
The clue would be in the words "food grade", you can still buy
phosphates as food grade.

[David]

We had a phosphate balls water treatment installed on the mains side of
our boiler.

As far as I know it used food grade phosphates which slowly dissolved; you
had to change the balls in the container every few years.

The hot water tap didn't seem to fur up.

Not as effective as a whole house water softener as far as I can recall,
but then we only used it on the hot to prevent the combi boiler furring up.

Cheers


Dave R



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[Rod Speed]

Brian Gaff <bri...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote

> Sounds like snake oil to me. If you remove the limescale it has to go
> somewhere,

Not if you turn it isnt something much more soluble.

Not saying that this device does that, but the ones that use salt clearly do
that.

> and that place is probably going to be in the pipework of the non salt
> softener,

This one could see the chemicals end up in the resin and since that
does need periodic replacement, likely is where it ends up if it works.

> or shock horror, its all abig con.

The electronic ones clearly are since there is no known
way to turn the relatively insoluble salts into much more
soluble salts purely with an electric or magnetic field.

[Bert Coules]

Many thanks to everyone for the replies and links. Very helpful and indeed
illuminating: I've decided to embrace the traditional technology.

I see that Monarch, makers of that no-salt unit, also have a conventional
machine in their catalogue: a two-chamber block-salt model which seems very
similar to the Kinetico softener I had at a previous house. The most
obvious difference is that the Monarch is about half the price. Searching
for reviews and opinions online I have so far failed to turn up a single
one, which might or might not be significant.

[Bert Coules]

I've now installed the Monarch block-salt model. Build quality is certainly
not as high-end as the Kinetico I used to have, but in every other respect
the Monarch seems to be fine. Thanks to everyone for the thoughts and
advice.