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Originally Posted by towny
Plumbed-in water softeners are not cheap! Not sure you're meant to drink the water that comes through them either, I think they are mainly designed to save your pipes from getting scaled up. We have a filter jug in the fridge for filling the kettle which makes a big difference, but it still isn't truly 'soft'.
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Water softeners work in different ways.
The original types require you to add salts or other chemicals. In which case the plumbing incoming main should be run with a spur before the softener going to the kitchen sink tap.
Other softeners are more of a plumbed in filter, rather than a softener. Those can be fitted immediately after your stopcock so that water passing through will then go to all taps including your kitchen, although most would in fact just fit it to the pipe serving the kitchen tap, thus it is a permanent filter instead of your Brita type thingy. You must remember to change the filter periodically else you could e drinking impure water, worse than if you did not filter at all.
The most modern way of doing this is a magnet, which clamps around the pipe. Somehow it is supposed to reorientate the ions and particles in the water so they wont cling to things in the same way and cause less scale. As these do not add anything to the water, they can be fitted to a pipe that serves all parts of the house, including drinking water.
A word of warning. In most houses, or flats where there are cold water storage tanks do not consider drinking from taps served by them. Brushing your teeth may be OK, but it might be worth checking the tank if you've not looked at it before. Especially in older homes, where there is no underfelt to tiles, the roofspace gets very dirty. Older tanks did not have lids. Thus all the dirt, creepy crawlies and other such stuff can fall into the tank. I've even heard of dead birds being in there. Imagine drinking that
And it won't do your tea making flavour any good either, so don't fill your teasmaid from your bathroom just to save the walk downstairs
