Wednesday 11 March 2009

LIMESCALE IN KENT & WILTSHIRE

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White Cliffs of Dover and White Horse of Uffington


If you dig into the ground in certain parts of the British Isles you’ll soon find that you hit a hard white rock. This rock is commonly called LIMESTONE and in it’s softer form it is known as CHALK.

Dover in Kent has its famous WHITE CLIFFS and in Wiltshire the famous WHITE HORSE can be seen in the valley aptly named after it.

Beautiful as they are, the White Cliffs of Dover and the Vale of the White Horse pose a problem for the people who live there because it means they also have hard water.

Hard water is water which has run through a chalky layer of earth. The chalk, basically Calcium Carbonate, dissolves into the water, which came down as rain and then ends up in your house and can cause havoc with your pluming and appliances, as people who live in hard water areas will tell you.

The problem is not so much with the cold water, which contains masses of calcium ions in solution, because this water is very good for you. Children need high calcium content in the water to build bones and teeth and it has been shown too that high levels of calcium prevent heart attacks. In fact the Calcium ion is an important factor in the metabolism of all cells and without it we would all die.

No, the problem comes when you heat the water or change the water pressure because this forces the calcium ions out of solution and they then recombine with the carbonate ions to become what they were originally, which is Limestone or Chalk only now it’s a nasty hard substance called LIMESCALE.

Limescale that can be seen is the least of your worries, it’s the Limescale in the boilers and heaters that cause the major problem because here the thick deposit actually acts as an insulator and prevents heat escaping from the elements and heating up the water. This means your heating bills go through the roof. If you add to this the hugely damaging effect the limescale has on all your appliances, the restriction of water flowing in pipes and the mess it makes you soon realise you must do something about it…BUT WHAT?

The answer maybe a water softener as this will remove all the hardness from the water before it gets into your house. Water softeners in the main use salt and require plumbing. They are in fact just another thing to look after and without a constant re-fill of salt they fail.

But alternative help is at hand in the form of the Little Plumber range of electronic water softeners, which require no chemicals or maintenance. Costing a fraction of the price of a water softener they can be installed by a competent DIY-er and are actually guaranteed to work. They come with a 12-month no-quibble money back guarantee. So what have the people living in Kent and Wiltshire got to lose? Nothing it would seem. And if you live in one of the other areas of hard water nor have you.