Last year, kitchens and bathrooms were the most popular rooms for renovation projects, with the average new kitchen in the UK costing around £11,000, and the average price of a new bathroom coming in at £5,000.
But one thing that often gets overlooked is the issue of hard water and the damage it can cause.
“Almost 13 million households in the UK live in hard water areas – that’s almost half the households in the country. And with hard water comes limescale,” said Stuart Gizzi, director of bathroom, plumbing and heating equipment manufacturer Inta.
“Having a beautiful new kitchen or bathroom is all well and good until taps, shower heads, kettles, appliances and pipes have a nasty build-up of limescale, which can lead to multiple problems – from heating inefficiency hiking up energy bills and costly system failure, to an increase in the consumption of cleaning products and a shorter lifespan for electrical appliances.”
A simple, cost-effective way of improving water quality in hard water areas is to install a water conditioner, such as the Inta ActivFlo Lite.
The ActivFlo Lite is a compact device that is fitted to one water pipe in a property, and can be retrofitted. It works by treating the water directly, using a unique alloy that changes the chemical structure of limescale-forming calcium carbonate in water, converting calcite, a form of calcium carbonate that causes hard water, into aragonite.
Suitable for domestic applications, the WRAS-approved ActivFlo Lite is available with 15mm, 22mm and 28mm connections. It comes with a five-year warranty and is priced from just £53.22.
“The ActivFlo Lite has a clean ‘in-line’ design which makes for quick and easy installation in both new-build and retrofit applications,” added Stuart. “Its patented fitting system incorporates a collar at either end of the device, which can be removed without any modification to the existing pipework.
“When you consider the tens of thousands of pounds people spend on a kitchen or bathroom makeover, installing an ActivFlo Lite for an extra £53 is worth every penny if hard water issues can be resolved – it works out to less than 1 per cent of the cost of a new kitchen!”
