Water softeners in Tullamore, Co. Offaly. Supplied and fitted.

Why Tullamore water is so hard

Offaly is limestone and bog, and the public supply for Tullamore comes out of that limestone, from river intakes and boreholes that have both spent a long time in contact with the rock. Uisce Éireann's figure for the Tullamore supply zone is around 300 mg/L of calcium carbonate, on the boundary of hard and very hard, which puts the town in the same bracket as Portlaoise and Navan.

It shows up the way it does everywhere in the midlands: a white floor on the kettle, chalky taps, a shower screen that never comes clean and an immersion that packs in early.

What hard water does in a Tullamore home

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

A whole-house softener on the incoming mains stops all of it, so every tap, shower and appliance in the house gets soft water.

Which AquaSilk suits a Tullamore house

Most of our Tullamore installs are three and four bed family homes in the estates off the Clara, Arden and Daingean roads, usually four or five people and two bathrooms. On 300 mg/L water the AquaSilk Midi is the standard fit. Smaller households and apartments in the town centre suit the Mini, which fits under a kitchen sink. Larger houses with three or more bathrooms, common out the country roads towards Kilbeggan and Clara, take the Maxi. The size picker below marks the right one.

Private wells around Tullamore

A large share of Offaly homes outside the towns are on their own borehole. Well water here is nearly always hard, and because of the bog it often carries iron, manganese or colour as well, which a softener on its own will not fix. We send a sample to an accredited lab and specify the system off the results, which might be a softener alone or a softener behind an iron filter. Our well water treatment page explains the options.

Getting it fitted in Tullamore

Tullamore is about seventy minutes from our Dublin base and we cover Clara, Kilbeggan, Daingean, Edenderry, Birr and Portarlington 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 Tullamore. If you want a quote first, use the quote form; the full range is on our main water softener page.