Under-sink water filter installation in Manchester
Getting an under-sink drinking water filter fitted in Manchester — what it costs, whether you could do it yourself, and where the job stops being DIY.
Soft
United Utilities
Water in Manchester
- Manchester has soft water — among the softest of any major UK city — drawn largely from Lake District and Pennine reservoirs, and typically well under 100 mg/l CaCO₃.
- That single fact inverts the usual advice. Water softeners are very rarely worth fitting here, and an installer recommending one in central Manchester is worth questioning closely.
- The filtration questions that do come up in Manchester are about taste, chlorine, and older internal pipework in the city's very substantial stock of Victorian terraces and converted mills.
- Soft water is naturally more plumbosolvent, meaning it is more inclined to dissolve metals from pipework. In properties that may still have lead supply pipes — a live issue in older Manchester housing — that is a genuine reason to filter drinking water, and it is a different reason from the one most of the country has.
- Because softener demand is low, installers here are more often general plumbers who fit filtration occasionally than specialists who do nothing else.
You have soft water — there is no limescale problem to fix.
A water softener would be money spent on a problem you do not have, and anyone trying to sell you one here is worth questioning. If you want to improve your water it will be about taste, chlorine or older pipework, not hardness. Soft water is also slightly more inclined to dissolve metals from old plumbing, which is a different reason to filter drinking water.
Who supplies Manchester
Water company boundaries do not follow council boundaries. Check your postcode for the supplier at your address.