Water softeners in Athlone, Co. Westmeath. Supplied and fitted.

Why Athlone water is hard

Athlone's public supply comes from Lough Ree on the Shannon, and Lough Ree sits entirely on limestone. The lake is shallow and slow, so the water has plenty of time to dissolve calcium and magnesium out of the rock before it ever reaches the treatment plant. For the Westmeath and Longford midlands the regional figure is around 280 mg/L of calcium carbonate, which is hard, and some streets on older groundwater-fed mains run harder again. Put your Eircode into the checker at the top of the page for a reading closer to home.

Athlone has had its share of supply problems over the years, with restrictions and bursts, and the one constant through all of it has been the scale. If the kettle in your kitchen has a white floor, this is why.

What hard water does in an Athlone home

• Immersions and hot cylinders. Scale on the element and coil means slower heating, higher bills and an element that fails years early.
• Electric showers and mixer valves. The heater can and spray plate block, the flow drops and the shower starts cutting out.
• Combi boilers. The plate heat exchanger clogs and the hot water flow drops away winter by winter.
• Dishwashers, washing machines and kettles scale up and get replaced early.

A whole-house softener on the incoming mains stops every bit of it at the front door.

Which AquaSilk suits an Athlone house

Most of our Athlone installs are family homes in Monksland, off the Ballymahon and Dublin roads and in the newer estates on the Roscommon side, typically four or five people and two bathrooms. That is AquaSilk Midi territory. Apartments and smaller houses in the town centre and around the college are well served by the Mini, which fits under a kitchen sink. Larger houses out towards Glasson, Moate and the lake with three or more bathrooms take the Maxi. The size picker below will mark the right one for your household.

Private wells around Athlone

A great many houses between Athlone, Moate, Glasson, Ballinasloe and Ballymahon are on their own borehole, and midlands well water is nearly always hard. It can also carry iron, manganese or hydrogen sulphide (the rotten egg smell) that a softener alone will not deal with. We send a sample to an accredited lab and specify the system off the results. See our well water treatment page for what that involves.

Getting it fitted in Athlone

Athlone is ninety minutes from our Dublin base on the M6 and we cover Moate, Kilbeggan, Ballinasloe, Glasson, Ballymahon and Roscommon town on the same run, so we group installs and get to you quickly. Order it fitted online or ring us, send a photo of your stop valve and the space beside it, and we book a slot. Two to three hours later you have soft water, salt in the tank and a plumber who has shown you how to look after it. The fitted price shown is the full price for Athlone. For a quote first, the quote form takes two minutes, and our main water softener page has the full range.