BWT Water Softener WS555

A superb product but the overflow outlet is too close to the product back wall that it cannot accept the standard overflow pipe if the cabinet it is installed into has anything other than a 2mm thickness back panel. Anyhow it's just so much easier to use some of the supplied flexible discharge pipe, if any is spare, to make the overflow Into 1.5 inch waste pipe reduced to 22mm standard overflow solvent weld, but adds few turns of electrical insulating tape to increase the flexible pipe diameter to a secure push fit into the 22mm socket. It's now setup correctly with an included uk engineer site commissioning visit. I should have fitted one years ago. What a time saving product and everything is sparkling clean every day.

Yey!!! It’s in and working beautifully may it continue.. We are absolutely thrilled,we badly missed our old ancient softner and the one we ordered to replace it was faulty.. this time we chose one with 5 star customer service rating and that alone and have peace of mind.. The pipes included were too hard to install but we were able to use ones from our previous one.. I cannot as yet comment further as it’s only day one but beautiful silky water and no scum on our tea and stained cups, shiny sinks again.. doing its job

Summary: Very good item when working but with design flaws that if improved would be a 5 star product. great customer service from BWT and faultless delivery. Delivery was faultless, very clear on when it was going to be delivered and arrived on time and undamaged. The softener comes with almost everything you need including valves and flexi-hoses with the exception of a Pressure Reducing Valve (not necessarily required) and overflow pipework (except two elbow joints - one on the unit and one spare). The item itself is very good overall but with some big areas for improvement. Being a bulky item, it was not particularly easy to remove from the packaging or move around in general. Subtle indents on the unit could be useful to ease movement if required. Added to that, is the poor lid design that falls apart at the slightest touch into two pieces. The two pieces could do with either being permanently attached together or at the very least clipped together and to the unit. The very top piece with the display screen is attached to the unit by delicate cables which is a recipe for disaster given how easy it is to dislodge. This leads on to my next issue... Error message 'Err 1' - this frustrated me for a whole Sunday when trying to set up the softener going through litres and litres of water. I had all the correct plumbing connections but could not figure out why I was getting the error message. I phoned BWT customer service on the Monday as I could not find any guidance online or in the installation manual except to ring BWT. The customer service was brilliant, by far the best customer experience I have received in a very long time. They arranged for an engineer to visit the next working day (Tuesday) as it couldn't be sorted over the phone. Upon hanging up, I rechecked what I was told on the phone and noticed that two prongs on the grey cable had been dislodged from their connections on the motherboard next to where the power supply is plugged in to the unit. (this appears to be a common problem) I plugged them back in; retried the installation and it worked perfectly within minutes. I can only assume these cables became dislodged when accidentally knocking the unsecure lid off (my fault I suppose - but poor design). I phoned to cancel the engineer appointment but BWT explained they carry out a Free of Charge Commissioning Service to ensure correct installation so they proceeded with the call out - Again, great customer service! The engineer was not surprised when I explained the error message issue. He checked the set up, water pressure, water hardness (as he was surprised I had set it so high), and the unit itself. Now installed correctly the unit works perfectly and produces perfectly soft water. A testing kit is included with simple instructions of how to test for water hardness and how it corresponds to configuring the water softener. Living in Oxfordshire we have extremely hard water (400ppm - tested by me using the kit provided, and by the engineer). The water softener is easily adjustable to suit this.

Good Built Quality and cheaper than other competitors in the market. At first I was wondered by the price of Harvey water softeners as you will find them as the only product when search for best water softeners in Google. This one is cheaper and does it jobs like others. Negatives 1. It is quite heavy (but its good quality) and tall. Need to be more compact 2. The inlet and outlet hose supplied with it is too hard and not flexible which made by DIY installation much more tough. 3. The flavour is not that good Positives 1. Go for it if you know basic plumbing 2. Well softened water and softness can also be adjusted

easy to set up with included water testing kit supplied, it also has a low salt alarm to remind you to fill it up. it takes salt tablets or blocks. The only thing different from our last softener is the overflow pipe which is 3/4 overflow solid pipe not flexible (im guessing it wouldn't freeze up like a thinner flexible pipe). Had to call technical as motor wire had come off and they were brilliant, quick to answer the phone and knew the product so all sorted. Very happy so far with really soft water and using a lot less soap and shampoo (first shower with it connected and used way too much shampoo :-).

Fitted this myself as an average DIYer. Needed to replace some of the 22mm connectors though - they include FlowMasta internal 22->15mm adapters, which are to put it generously, complete dog toffee. I couldn't get them to seal and replaced with 15mm isolation valves and 15mm double check valve. Kept the 22mm hoses though. Happy with the resulting water and salt usage. Been in use now for about 2-3 months without issue.

After a couple of weeks seems to be doing the job. It was a replacement for an old Tap works that had started to degrade, so was almost a drop in job - except for the overflow which was different. Biggest problem was the instructions which unusually weren't in Chinglish and were very readable. However the full ones were only available online and were missing several details or clear instructions about things which meant having to guess a bit and hope I was doing it right. My eyes aren't the best these days but even with my specs on I was really struggling to read the small print on the display. Eventually I realised there was a protective film over it - there's no tab or marking and it just looks like a matt finish. It took some scratching at an edge to get a corner up to peel it off. EDIT. After about 4 months use I've found this is using about double the salt of our previous softener - about 10kg per 4 weeks vs 8 weeks for the old Tapworks one. When I eventually get the commissioning visit (which keeps getting pushed back) maybe that can be improved, but for now I'm docking one star.

Noticeable difference straight away. Great unit, serves a large house of 3-4 easily and would be fine with more. Got my plumber to set it up as I needed some pipework doing under the sink. Still on my first set of salt 4 months later. Had made a huge difference to our hair and skin.