Exciting times here, looking at getting a new toaster and kettle. Whoop.
We have pretty hard water down here, and have previously used a brita filter kettle. Downside being the kettle is only 1l, and we never change the filter!!! Kind of makes it a bit pointless. I also circumvent the filter and just pour the water straight in as iām too impatient.
Mrs GB isnāt keen on moving away from a filter kettle, despite the above.
I seem to recall someone, and iām pretty sure it was @Poet talking about an inline filter on their cold water pipe coming into the kitchen.
Does Poet or anyone else have any experience of these solutions? Are they any good? How often do you have to replace the filter? Can you do it yourself or does it need a plumber (bearing in mind i am incredibly good at breaking things)?
Ta
despite knowing itās a total waste of money iām sorely tempted by the posh Sage toaster that isnāt spring loaded, but has a mechanised loader and little cool features (that will probably just break and cause headaches!!)
We have hard and soft water, it depends where it is coming from, as we have multiple water sources.
Can always tell when itās hard as the toilets start to get dirty after flushing.
We drink coffee or cordial, so canāt tell the difference in ātasteā
I rarely drink ārawā tap water - itās mostly got something in it!
I think you have to be careful about the terminology, as you have water softeners and filters.
Typically if you just want water you can drink then itās a filter you want. I think these normally get fitted as an additional tap on the sink.
When we had our kitchen re-done I went for a 4-in-1 tap (cold-unfiltered, hot-unfiltered, boiling & filtered) which cost about Ā£500.
A softener is usually treats the water for the whole house and will stop the toilet issues (plus shower heads, etc.) scaling up like @Poet referred to. Quite often these involve adding salt to the water so itās not recommended that you drink it (though many people do and Iām sure itās not legal been deemed unsafe), so you keep a normal cold feed to the kitchen tap.
I believe you can get simple in line softeners that use magnets and electric.
Sorry, bit long and I didnāt really answer your query!
Think iāll just stick with a Britta on the kettle, or tell the boss to suck it up ā¦ yeah right.
We do have scaly showerhead and the toilet is totally scaled up. But i have much bigger fish to fry having discovered our damp/mould problem is much worse than we thought! May have to actually pull our fingers out and get this one sorted!! Though it would help if any of the roofers weāve tried to contact would actually have the common courtesy to return a call or a text, even if itās to say no!!! probs one for the rant thread!
We bought a Smeg toaster and kettle. Theyāre stealth grey, so no obnoxious branding. We did double the value of the kitchen by getting them!
We have very very hard water in Winchester (River Test area) and have always used a jug with a filter. (Britax Maxim I think). We use the jus to fill the kettle and change filters every 6 wks. Our just used to have a timer for filter change but it stopped working but we just know when to change them now.
Dad used to work for Permutit many many years ago, a water softener company, back then the units were huge. Nowadays they are smaller and take salt ābricksā but you have to store them somewhere and our kitchen is too small for a plumbed in softener.
The āinlineā ones can be often mistaken for softeners and even folks that have them sometimes call them softeners but they are āwater conditionersā and not the same thing.
If I want a quick drink of water Iāll drink from the tap otherwise itās the jug for everything. The biggest hassle is wiping down both showers every time and I also worry about how much our Megaflo system is rocking up.
For the kettle itself, even with filtered water, it still rocks up, we use some stuff from Robert Dyas about every two months to de-rock it.
cheers FP, sounds like similar to us then (but a bit worse again). But you keep on top of jobs like wiping down and cleaning stuff. Weāre terrible at all that, like really bad! haha.
We have a Softener, that treats the whole house. Was Ā£500 plus 10kg of salt about every 2 months. Tbh we still get some limescale around the house, itās not a silver bullet.
@joex thatās a very good point with the stopcock! I must go and check the ānewā one we had installed 2 years ago with the Softener.
We get loads of damp in the two utility room cupboards next to the external wall where the water comes in. The constant changes in temps, and the softener with a water reservoir in it; it mainly comes off the pipes though. Other than to heat it, thereās no cure!
I buy these 25KG bags (seem best value for money I could find), and generally buy multiple (4 of them last time) and keep in my garage. That being said, due to mold issues in the past I do have a dehumidifier running in there.
probs one for the rant thread!