cheapest to buy and run water softener

[cypher007]

wondering what would be the cheapest water softener to buy and run?

its for a 4 bed house with one bathroom, maybe shower room later. 3 people, one who is mad and uses water like its unlimited. we had water bills about 5 years ago approaching £600 a year, when my son was a baby. he has eczema and my missus would rinse his clothes like crazy, still does.

were having a 250l stainless tank fitted soon, with 2 immersions and boiler coil. I plan to run the hot water in the summer off the solar pv system using a home made pv diverter kit I bought.

what I don't want to happen is for it to all scale up within a year. we live in a "very hard" water area, according to anglian water. I did consider polyphosphate dosing, but this seems almost as expensive to run as a salt softener.


so ideas please. friend of mine swears by his kinetico. so thinking either kinetico 2020c secondhand or new tapworks AD11.

 

[Boilerman2]

A water softener has benefits for those who suffer from skin conditions Kinetico Softeners have the advantage of being non electric but are more expensive to buy they also use solid salt blocks which whilst convenient can be more expensive to buy I have a Monarch Softener in my property (4 people) I use a 25Kg bag of salt tablets every month at a cost of about £6 per bag. the water is extremely hard in my area around 450ppm !

 

[cypher007]

a plumber on another site said he fitted Monarch. do they do a metered regen or timed.