Harvey water softener: pull-out-tap installation notes for HarveyArc buyers

I finally have one of the much-talked-about Harvey water softeners too! As everyone knows, tap water in England, especially in the southeast, is safe to drink directly but extremely hard…

First, let’s distinguish between two concepts

1. Filtered drinking water
   Filtered hard water. Filtration is a physical process that only removes chemical residues in the water, such as chlorine, and heavy metals from ageing pipes. If water tastes odd or comes out cloudy, filtering it once usually improves it a lot. However, it is still hard water after filtration because the minerals—mainly calcium and magnesium—have not been removed, and that is a good thing because the human body needs these minerals. A filtration product can be a filter jug or a water filter. Harvey installed a water filter for me, and its filter element needs replacing about once a year.
2. Household water
   Water for showering, washing hands, washing dishes, doing laundry, flushing the toilet and so on. This is the water that needs to be softened and is worth softening. Soft water is better for skin when showering and washing your hair, does not leave water spots on sinks, taps or bathroom glass, saves cleaning time, and can extend the working life of appliances such as washing machines and dishwashers. Softening hard water is a chemical process. It can be done by boiling, although that has limited ability, or by using sodium ions from salt to exchange with the calcium and magnesium ions in the water. Harvey’s water softener softens the water by adding salt—sodium ions—to it, so the salt needs topping up regularly. Older people and children are not advised to drink water softened this way because the sodium content is too high.

Installation process
I first found a neighbour who had already had one installed and referred me. We could both receive 10 bags of salt, or you can contact a salesperson through the official website, tell them that a friend referred you, and they will explain what to do.
The salesperson I dealt with responded very quickly. We made contact on Monday and exchanged several emails. They knew I had basically decided to install one but wanted to learn more before buying, so they fitted me in for a visit on Wednesday to explain it. Then, early the following Tuesday morning, the installers came to install the system and collect payment.
Because both a softener and a filter were installed, they needed separate controls. The soft-water control needs to allow temperature adjustment, while the filtered-water control does not need temperature adjustment. You can keep the original tap and drill a separate hole in the sink for filtered water, or choose Harvey’s three-way tap, which puts the soft-water and filtered-water controls in the same tap. But I had a more demanding requirement: I wanted a three-way tap that could also pull out, because I had wanted that feature for a long time. Harvey did not have a suitable tap, so I bought one myself from Amazon for a few dozen pounds and paid a small installation fee for the Harvey installers to fit it. That saved me several hundred pounds compared with Harvey’s tap.
The whole installation took about four hours and cost just over £2,000. I shared a referral offer under which both parties could receive 10 bags of salt, and I had to follow up with Harvey to obtain the salt. I am not exaggerating when I say that, during the year since installation, I have not bought a single bag of salt; all of it came through referrals.