Water softeners in Carlow, Co. Carlow. Supplied and fitted.

Why Carlow water is hard

Carlow town takes its public supply from the River Barrow, treated at Sion Cross on the edge of the town. The Barrow's catchment runs through the limestone of the Laois and Kildare plain before it reaches Carlow, so the water picks up calcium and magnesium the whole way down. For the south-east midlands the regional figure is around 300 mg/L of calcium carbonate, which is hard to very hard. Type your own Eircode into the checker at the top of the page for a reading closer to your street.

The signs are the same ones every Carlow household knows: scale on the shower screen, a crust around the taps, a kettle that needs descaling every few weeks.

What hard water does in a Carlow home

• Hot cylinders and immersions. Scale coats the element and the coil, the tank heats slower and the element burns out early.
• Electric showers and mixer valves. The heater can and spray plate block, pressure drops and the shower starts running hot and cold.
• Combi boilers. The plate heat exchanger furs up and the hot water flow fades over a couple of winters.
• Washing machines, dishwashers and kettles all scale and all get replaced early.

A whole-house softener on the incoming mains puts a stop to it. Every tap, shower and appliance downstream gets soft water from that day on.

Which AquaSilk suits a Carlow house

Most of what we fit in Carlow is three and four bed family homes in Graiguecullen, off the Tullow Road and in the estates on the Kilkenny side, usually four or five people and two bathrooms. On water this hard the AquaSilk Midi is the normal fit. Smaller households and apartments near the town centre and the college suit the Mini, which fits under a kitchen sink. Larger houses with three or more bathrooms, more common out towards Tullow, Leighlinbridge and Rathvilly, take the Maxi. The size picker below marks the right one for you.

Private wells around Carlow

Outside the town, towards Tullow, Bagenalstown, Rathvilly and the Wicklow border, many houses are on their own well. Well water here is usually hard, but it can also carry iron, manganese or bacteria that a softener alone will not deal with. We send a sample to an accredited lab and specify the system off the results. Our well water treatment page explains the options.

Getting it fitted in Carlow

Carlow is an hour from our Dublin base on the M9 and we cover Tullow, Bagenalstown, Leighlinbridge, Athy and Castledermot on the same run. Order the softener fitted online or ring us, send a photo of your stop valve and the space beside it, and we book a slot. The install takes two to three hours and we leave you with soft water and the first bag of salt in the tank. The fitted price shown is the full price for Carlow. For a quote first, use the quote form; the full range is on our main water softener page.