How do people who use water softeners (which use salt blocks) procure their salt ?
I brought my Harvey water softener alongwith me when moving from UK. It uses 2*4kg salt blocks. I was trying to buy some more to replenish my stock. In UK it was quite easy to buy but in France it seems no shop stocks them. On Amazon I saw it is a British shop which is selling them in France.
Anyone in the same boat ?
Can’t you use the huge sacks sold here?
I believe that should also work, might need some tinkering around, but was looking if I could continue with what i am doing currently.
Sure, plenty around like this
But as a general point, and not trying to teach you to suck eggs, changing to the French way and French products ends up less painful in the end.
I believe once my current one gives up the ghost will opt for a French one anyways.
For anyone thinking of installing salt water softeners that have fosse septiques, you’ll have to empty them very often because the fosse septique will not work as designed. Salt kills the bactria
Brine is brine is brine, no magic just a salt solution and French salt is the same as all the rest.
Interesting, but after twenty plus years nobody has said that to me. On the other hand I’m not convinced that water softeners work at all 
Oh yes they do!
Apologies to those who have heard this conte fabuleux before…
A few years ago we had a Quooker hot water tap fitted in the kitchen in my mother’s house - it provides instant hot water from a small tank under the sink - we needed it because the main hot water tank is at the other end of the bungalow and getting hot water for washing up involved running the hot tap for a couple of minutes.
Anyway the genius who sold and installed it assured us that using it with hard water direct from the mains would be no problem. He also installed the hot and cold feeds the wrong way round…
Within 18 months the thing had furred up completely inside - it was one solid block of limescale. Fortunately, Quooker honoured their warranty and replaced the unit. We then had our local plumber connect it to the supply from our water softener and it’s functioned perfectly ever since.
Surrey water is over 200ppm because of the chalky soil so without a water softener limescale gums up shower heads and forms a scale around tap outlets pretty quickly.
We have a Harvey softener that runs on two salt blocks.
How much of a difference you would notice from having one would of course depend on how hard your water is to start with, but we certainly notice it.
Unlike the purveyors of pseudo science softeners who ask 1,2 or 3 bed house and not how hard is your water?
Real softners use ion exchange resins to do the work and the salt solution just regenerates the resin over and over to continue softening the water.
AFAIK Harveys have a good reputation, they’ve been in business for 40-odd years.
Yes they are fine as are BWT and Kinetico, all using ion exchange resin. Those electrical or magnetic jobbies however a different matter.
Raising Wozza’s point the brine solution could go into a separate soak away avoiding the septic
Well that’s reassuring. I’ve been paying a man who comes very year (for twenty years) to service ours, but never really asked what he was doing. I presume it"s a “life time” . . warrantee. I’t be a bit daft to cancell it now I suppose. Though they look simple enough
They should change the resin in the tank every few years as required could be every 5 years or a bit longer. There are usually a couple of solenoid valves that may require replacement as salt water corrosion can be a problem.
I’ve never been tempted to delve into ours, I just bung a block of salt into ours when I see a red indicator line in the receptacle!
No idea when ours was last serviced, probably 5 years ago plus. Must check.
