Salt is Salt, right?
- Tom Purse
- Jun 29, 2021
- 2 min read
You'd have thought so.
Over the years we've seen some products come and go, usually available online and the price looks really good.
But is it costing your machine?
We found the Block Salt on the left in a machine after being called out to it due to malfunction back in May 2019.
Compare the colour difference to the Kinetico branded Block salt on the right hand side!
Inside the machine we found lots of grit, brown water and sediment floating inside.
This was the cause of this particular machine to fail.
I mean imagine spending upwards of £1000 on a water softener only to see it fail because you filled it with salt 50p cheaper than you local water softener specialist can supply it at!
Earlier this year, we found another machine filled with 'evaporated sea/lake salt' blocks, again, the water inside was BROWN!
At the bottom of the salt well, we had grit, debris and floating on top was a foam.
So, we removed the Blocks of salt from a customers home and decided to carry out an experiment.
We took 2 old Kinetico Cabinets and placed a pair of each Block salt inside.
Kinetico top, Evaporated sea/lake salt block at the bottom.
Filled both cabinets with the same level of water.
Allowed to sit and dissolve, just like they'd sit between regenerations at home
Kinetico Blocks.
Look at the foam after only a few hours on the evaporated sea/lake salt!
A few days later, we carried out a 'regeneration' by syphoning the water out, just like a machine does.
Look at the tide mark above on the 'Evaporated sea/lake salt'
The colour difference! (Evaporated sea/lake salt, left. Kinetico, right)
After refilling with fresh water again, the foam bubbles return on the 'evaporated sea/lake salt'.
We repeated this a few times, until today where the block salt is very nearly all gone.
Look at that!
Kinetico Block salt, no contaminates, just salt.
Grit, debris, foam tide marks, scum floating on the surface in the evaporated sea/lake salt!
Now, this is just one pair of block salt. Our average customer uses 10 pairs or more a year, imagine the above 10 times worse!
Then it starts to get sucked into your £1595 Kinetico Premier Compact!
It's not just blocks, we've seen sea evaporated tablet salt do exactly same thing!
Please, please, please, buy your salt from you local water softener specialist, who cares about what you put into your machine.
Yes, over the year it may cost you a few £ more, but, it's well worth it!
Those blocks are so bad. But kinetico are now buying their kube branded blocks from the same factory that make those seasalt blocks in Egypt. Ask Mark Knapstead from Kinetico, he will confirm this. So the kube blocks that are being sold in Homebase for £7.50 per pack (by Kinetico) is exactly that crap you discovered in your experiment!