Water softeners in Mallow, Co. Cork. Supplied and fitted.

Why Mallow water is hard

Mallow sits in the Blackwater valley, and the valley floor is limestone. The town's water, whether it comes from the river or from boreholes in the ground beside it, has been in contact with that limestone and carries the calcium and magnesium to prove it. For the Cork region the figure is around 200 mg/L of calcium carbonate, which is hard, and parts of north Cork on groundwater run harder than that. Put your Eircode into the checker at the top of the page for a reading closer to your street.

Mallow is also, as it happens, where the AquaSilk is built. EPS Group have made water treatment equipment in the town since 1968, so the softener we fit in your kitchen was designed a few minutes from your door, for exactly this water.

What hard water does in a Mallow home

• Hot cylinders and immersions. Scale on the element and coil means slower heating, a higher bill and an element that fails early.
• Electric showers and mixer valves. The heater can and spray plate block, pressure drops and the shower starts cutting out.
• Combi boilers. The plate heat exchanger furs up and the hot water flow fades over a few winters.
• Dishwashers, washing machines and kettles scale up and get replaced early.

A whole-house softener on the incoming mains stops every bit of it, so the whole house gets soft water.

Which AquaSilk suits a Mallow house

Most of what we fit around Mallow is family homes off the Killarney, Cork and Limerick roads and in the estates on the Navigation Road side, usually four or five people and two bathrooms. On this water the AquaSilk Midi is the usual fit. Smaller households and apartments in the town centre are covered by the Mini, which fits under a kitchen sink. Larger houses with three or more bathrooms, common on the country roads towards Doneraile, Buttevant and Kanturk, take the Maxi. The size picker below marks the right one for your household.

Private wells in north Cork

A big share of homes between Mallow, Fermoy, Kanturk, Charleville and Mitchelstown are on their own borehole. North Cork well water is usually hard, and it can also carry iron, manganese or bacteria that a softener on its own will not deal with. We send a sample to an accredited lab and specify the system from the results. See our well water treatment page for what is involved.

Getting it fitted in Mallow

We fit nationwide with our own plumbers, and Mallow, Fermoy, Buttevant, Charleville, Kanturk, Doneraile, Mitchelstown and Millstreet are all covered from the same run through north Cork. 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 Mallow. For a quote first, the quote form takes two minutes, and the full range is on our main water softener page.