Water softeners - which one?

Hello,

In my area Water is calculated to be 24 degree , so I might well consider to use a device to reduce this (water softener) in my house (newly build, 2011), around 160m2.

I found this which costs around CHF 3500 Laugil 8000 (10l of resins), with 10 years warrenty and assembly includeded.

http://www.thermeo.ch/L8000%20xp%20thermeo.pdf

Do you know this product?

They say they are better than (more expensive) companies like BWT, Cunningham, etc.

But I found a chepaer one (CHF 2600), with 3 years warrenty installation included:

http://www.eau-select.ch/fr/adoucisseurs/offre-eco

Could you please share your experiences on this topic?

Which one do you use?

Maybe buying abroad could be cheaper...

Where we live in France it is sigificantly harder than that, and we do occasionally see water-softening systems being installed. Indeed, there was some sort of system in place in our house when we moved in.

But we took advice from our heating installer, who are a very local company, based in the same village, and they reckoned that there was really no point, for domestic supply, in any of these systems, either real, like the ones you mention, or the 'snake-oil' ones like sticking powerful magnets on your pipes and stuff.

In essence, a modern water heater/boiler can now cope with hard water without any problems, so no worries on that score.

So what else would you want softer water for? Well for drinking and cooking, yes. And that's best managed by a Brita or similar filter in your kitchen. We recently tried one of those, by Brita, that fixes onto the tap and filters on demand, but have been very disappointed by it - measuring by how quickly the kettle scales up it was only about 50% as effective as a jug filter (even with generic cartridges).

Interesting that when I was looking up how hard our water is, I came across this definition used by the Alsace Water suppliers:

Dureté inférieure à 10° F - eau très douce

Dureté de 10 à 20° F - eau douce

Dureté de 20 à 30° F - eau moyennement dure

Dureté de 30 à 40° F - eau dure

Dureté de 40 à 50° F - eau très dure

So as far as they're concerned your water isn't even very hard anyway. Ours is somewhere in the 30-40 range.

We have a Cillit water softener, http://www.cillit.tm.fr/FR/Produits/...Cillit-AQUIUM/

I'm not so much concerned about the boiler, but the hard water was horrible for my hair and skin. Much better now. The fact that kettles etc stay clean and bathroom is no longer full or limescale is a plus as well.

hi,

also for me its not the water to drink but for the shower and all electric appliances, etc.

may i ask if they came from france to CH to install it?

was it cheaper there?

thanks

I live across the border, so not sure about the prices in Switzerland. The softener works well though, can recommend the brand.