Hard water

Our water tasted good. Very good. Clean, clear, cold water you could drink from the taps. Unfortunately, it was also high in lime and was hard water. The most visible signs of this were in our kettle, which was full of flakes, and on every glass we had. Getting a wine glass clean was an effort to say the least. Oh, and out clothes were hard.

Still, the water tasted good. Having not really dealt with hard water in my life before, or at least not to this level, it was my wife that pointed out we should get a water softener to take the salt out of the water. This was especially important after we bought new appliances and became a necessity after the dishwasher blew up and the repair man said it was caused by the lime and why hadn't we been filling the salt container.

I didn't know we had to...

We filled the salt container and then we decided to buy a water softener. There are a lot of them around with a couple of different ways of working but we eventually settled on a W2B200 from Water2buy. It cost around 400€ with free delivery and the next week it was in our lounge. 

It turns out the hardest part, and most expensive, was getting it installed as I didn't want to do it so we got our builder to come in between other jobs and install it in the cave. And there it has sat for over a year now happily taking the lime out of our water through a process which uses a 10kg bag of salt every month or so. That costs...I don't remember actually. Bugger all.

And it has been good. We were warned that out water might taste salty and it doesn't. It doesn't taste quite as good but going from fantastic to normal has been bearable. We still put salt in the dishwasher but it is more from paranoia than anything else and our glasses sparkle and clothes are soft. You can't ask for a much better review than that.