You can take water softeners for granted. We did. It just gave nice soft water with no soap scum or shower head clogging or sink tap chalking up for over 10 years. Then things started to feel ‘wrong’. Washing my hair (what little there is of it) felt different. Shaving (what little I do) felt strange. At first we thought it was just autumn coming or something, but started to think “is it the water softener?”. Obviously you think not, at over £1,000 you do hope not. But after doing some water tests (£6 from Screwfix (other stores are available)) it was obvious the softener wasn’t softening. It’s a twin tank softener and it would seem (by the difference in tests during the week) that only one tank was bad, but the whole palava of repairing a softener daunted me – that’s unusual for me, but they seem like quite complicated machines with lots of clockwork bits in them, each customised for particular customers’ water hardness level, no whizzy electronics to do it. Anyway, I saw the cost of a new one (gulp – £1,800 typically) and looked for someone to repair it. I’ve found a company to do it for about £600, so I’ll give it a go, send it off and let you know how it goes. Fingers crossed !!

If you want to see how complex they are check out this video on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/_JGBicsTlEU