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Discuss What the heck is this? in the General DIY Plumbing Forum area at Plumbers Forums

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Hi everyone,
I’m new to the forum and joined specifically to try to get an answer to my question.

I have an 88yo mother-in-law who is recently widowed and her 90yo husband who has since passed insisted on doing everything for himself. Nothing wrong with that but now that he has gone my wife (their daughter) and I are having to increasingly put right things that he had left.

My question is, she pointed this thing out to me yesterday (see pic below) and says that it is some kind of water softener. Not that I disbelieve her but she’s a complete technophobe and really has no idea how things work, because my father-in-law would just fix them himself, whether or not they should be “fixed” that way, if you understand my meaning.

As you can see it’s about 150mm (6”) in size as I put a rule alongside for scale. It’s located in a cupboard in the shower room, which is immediately behind the shower. It looks like it’s attached to the cold water pipes and as you can see the top can come off with a spanner that’s big enough for the job. To the left (out of shot) the pipe has a tap/stopcock(?).

I have no idea what’s inside it, but mother-in-law tells me that she thinks her husband would some kind of white balls into it having cleared out a sludge beforehand.

I have done a little DIY plumbing in the past but I am no professional or even gifted/good amateur, so if anyone can tell me what this is firstly and secondly what, if anything, I have to do with it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

IMG_4052.jpeg
 
Your mother in law is absolutely correct, it is a water softener and filter be it a very old fashioned one. Weco still make this type of softener but using modern day materials ie. plastic.

A Calmag XC-SI-CALMAG-15, Magnetic 15 mm Compression Scale Inhibitor would be a good replacement for the one installed and costs about £15 on Amazon. Just a bit of pipe work alteration and job done.
 
Last edited:
Hi All,
Thanks for the replies. WECO said it wasn’t one of theirs but it was the sales department that replied and maybe they weren’t up on old products. @Rrplumb thank you for the suggested replacement and it’ll be something I’ll look into.
 

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