Our water softener started acting up last week, so I got the bloke from Harveys in Woking to come and look at it - he diagnosed it as “dead as a dodo” unfortunately.
I’m not asking for advice on what to buy as the deed is done, we had him replace it on the spot last night, but £1500 for a new one was a somewhat unwelcome expense!
The alternative was a replacement innards for the old one, but that was going to be £900, and would only have had a 3 month warranty (I assume it would have been a refurbished part).
The old softener had done 15 years service which I believe is as long as they can be expected to last, so there you go. I had hoped to keep the old one going until my mother has to go into a care home and we sell the house!
What is slightly annoying is the salt blocks for the new one are curved instead of rectangular, so the stock of blocks we had for the old machine are redundant, and we now have to buy Harvey’s own curved blocks instead of generic rectangular blocks off Amazon.
It’s a bit like the coffee machine pods - the old Nespresso pods are out of copyright so everyone makes them - but Tassimo etc are still proprietary.
To be fair though the installer did leave us four packs of the new blocks and said another five would be sent to us.
Harveys seem to have a bit of a stranglehold on the UK water softener market (isn’t this a fascinating topic? ) as they sell their machines under several different brands through other retailers and plumbers’ merchants…
There’s scope for German or French appliance makers to get in on the act I think and bring prices down a bit. Or even the Chinese…
Does anyone in France have a water softener and if so is it French-made?
My son fitted one to his supply via the main water inlet in the garage so that it feeds their big American fridge that does water and ice dispensing because down here its calcaire so it prevents scaling the fridge up. I believe he got it in Leroy Merlin as he does most of his stuff as he gets points for discounts but it’s been in for about three years now and no problems whatsoever. Culligan (who I used to work next door to their head office in the UK ) also do installations here and have French outlets direct to customers as do several other companies. If its just for drinking water at the present time, why not buy a filter jug or two and use those, I did for many years before leaving the UK and they worked a treat and made hot drinks taste better plus not a big outlay unlike a new system for your home and you can take the jug and filters when you sell up.
Thank you for your thoughts @Shiba. Culligan I believe are the parent company of Harveys - or the other way around! See what I mean about a monopoly!
We have very hard water here in West Surrey so it’s also about not having all the pipes fur up and getting limescale on taps and shower heads etc.
We also have a Quooker tap in the kitchen which its installer connected to the hard water supply initially - that furred up completely inside 15 months. So we do need a whole house system.
Yes, everyone these days are interlinked and especially in the food and chemicals trade. Ah I see why especially with an expensive Quooker tap which are not allowed here I believe under health and safety norms. Personally speaking as I have just had to replace completely my inverted clim/heat system because the Mitsubishi system installed in the house new decided to pack up, send water down the wall and then ice up and turns out the guarantee from new was only two years by them and the plumber said it was not worth trying to replace parts as would have been more than half of the value of the unit he DID NOT install so opted for a complete replacement instead and know that it is good as he is an artisan and needs his reputation kept
BWT and Monarch are two other popular makes in the UK. BWT have been buying up companies in water and swimming pools at a quite outstanding rate. They are Spanish but have bought large French and UK companies.
We’ve had the same water softener, an APIC, for all water into the house for over twenty years. I wasn’t sure they actually worked but thought I may as well take precautions. Even with it we still use either bottled sparkling or jug filtered water to drink. We’ve never had any pipe problems and the showers etc. do not show calcium build up, even though we are in very hard water area.
Ever since I installed it a man turns up every year from the manufacturer to clean and service it and replace some in-line filters. The “Platinum” maintenance contract currently costs €123 a year plus consumables, €40 or so. So all I ever do is shovel in the salt pastilles. I think should it ever break down they will fix it for free. I’ve kept the the annual reports since day one in case there’s ever a discussion about who’s been maintaining it
APIC SAS technicians offer several types of maintenance contracts valid for one year, renewable. These contracts also include an annual maintenance visit. Spare parts, labour, travel and consumables are included or excluded depending on the type of contract.
These contracts are established for a flat fee based on the current rate. During the annual inspection and maintenance visit, the technician will perform the following services:
– water analysis: TH check,
– inspection and cleaning of the hydraulic system,
– check of the bypass valves,
– check and maintenance of the brine system,
– regeneration cycle testing,
– adjustment of the appliance settings if necessary,
– checking of the fresh water metering system,
– replacement of the pre-filter cartridge (cartridge not supplied),
– cleaning of the resins (cleaner not supplied) and regenerant (not supplied).
No, sodium chloride is sodium chloride, they are just trying it on. Same argument with swimming pool salt being more pure than the 50% cheaper water softener salt.
maintenance contract currently costs €123 a year plus consumables, €40 or so. So all I ever do is shovel in the salt pastilles. I think should it ever break down they will fix it for free. I’ve kept the the annual reports since day one in case there’s ever a discussion about who’s been maintaining it 