Water2Buy EASY W2B200 Water Softener, Hi Flow Electronic Demand/Up to 6 People – Filtered Soft Water 1250 litres/Day, NSF/FDS/ISO 9001 & 14001 Certified, 100% Limescale Removed/App Reminder for Salt

This review is to help people who want to buy and install the AS800 themselves. You need to be able to plumb a bit to do this, if it’s your first plumbing experience you will need someone that can help and direct you. It’s not a good project for the first time DIY plumber. The fittings at the rear are 1", my pipes are 22mm so I needed to get some screw-on fittings to fit the 1" thread and with 22mm compression to fit my pipework, called a female coupler, Screwfix had what I needed. You can't solder these as the plastic will melt if you do. The rest of my plumbing was soldered before the final connection to the softener after doing a dry run fitting of all the parts to be soldered. You could use flexi pipe, but I have had these fail after a period of time and I prefer to use copper and solder which seldom fails. To make a water tight connection you need to use plenty of PTFE tape around the thread of the screw on fittings at the back of the softener, wrap it around the thread and build it up to a wedge shape lots of turns are required. When you screw on the female coupler fitting it should make the PTFE squash up to form a nice washer between the plastic fitting on the AS800 and the female coupler, aim for about 2 to 3 mm wedge once done up fairly tight. I used standard hose pipe to connect the drain and overflow separately. You should add pipe clips to ensure these do not become detached. Check the distance that you need to run these pipes over as longer runs may need larger diameter pipe than standard hose pipe. When you have got the pipes in place you will want to test the connections are good, I would not put salt in yet as if you need to move it, it will be very heavy with salt in it. Once you are happy with the connections in bypass mode 'two red taps at back of softener aligned across the pipes' this allows you to bypass the softener if something goes wrong, and still have water although hard water. Turning the taps so the red tops align along the pipes allows water to enter and leave the AS800 softener chamber. I again would only put a minimum amount of salt in the unit just in case there is a problem, if you need to remove it for any reason you would have to dig the salt out, no fun at all. The power for the AS800 is from a plug top unit that has a low voltage (12V) output, you will need a socket fairly close by as the lead is not very long from the power supply to the AS800. There is a flying socket on the AS800 that accepts the low voltage plug on the 12V plug top mains adaptor. There is a mixing valve on the AS800 to the left and below the main head of the control assembly this needs to be gently turned anti -clockwise to its full travel to get soft water. Get the latest setup data for the softener from the web site of water2buy as the setup in the supplied manual is out of date, also don't do the load default in the setup menu as these are out of date also. You can get your water hardness from your local water authority web site. You will need that for an accurate setup. If you want to run a manual generation of the unit and you may want to do this to check you drain line connection is good. There are two things you need to do, first is set in the menu of the unit the Meter to 'Immediate' the second is set the REG.Cap to 00.01 this will trigger a manual regeneration. You won't find this in the manual! It’s very important you get the rest of the settings correct in the menu first. I found the setting on their web site to be very different from what the unit was set to, so do this once you have the unit powered up. If you do this don’t forget to set the REG.Cap back to your correct setting for your water and usage. Performance The unit is producing great softened water for me and I am very happy that it works so well. I managed to get two 25kg bags of salt into the unit making it excellent for those, like me, who don't want to be adding salt frequently. I have to say that the menu system takes some getting use-to and may confuse at first, however once you have gone through the menu a couple of times it becomes clear. Mostly you won’t need to do this unless the power is off for long enough for it to forget the settings you have made. It may be worth making a note of your settings and leaving it nearby just in case. The dial on the front is in fact an indication of the position of the multi-way valve that directs the water according to what being done by the control software. Most all of the time this is in the SERV position and it only moves during regeneration. The motor that drives this is quiet, but the water flowing does make some noise when regenerating, how much noise will depend on your mains pressure at the time. The unit is quiet when softening water or idle so that is great. I have no flow issues and we are spread over 3 floors and have 3 bathrooms, utility and kitchen. I have not supplied softened water to my kitchen drinking tap, fridge water dispenser and garden tap for obvious reasons. There are some settings in the menu that remain unexplained, but it is useful to know that the Meter setting of both ‘Immediate’ and ‘Delayed’ refers to when the unit will regenerate once it has counted through enough water to require re-generation. Set to ‘delayed’ it will wait until the set time in the menu and if set to immediate it will start re-generating right away which may be inconvenient. When the unit is re-generating you can still get water passing through, but it is not being softened during re-generation process. The display shows the count-down to re-generation as you use water, this changes slowly over time as this unit has a very good capacity and re-generates infrequently depending on use. My only criticism of the unit is the display and user interface is not the best, however it works so I don’t have a problem with it. Overall I like the unit, it’s reasonably priced, does what I want to do and it does that well. I cannot comment on long term performance as I only had it working for a few weeks.

This is a comparatively high-end water-softener which I purchased through Amazon in February 2013 for under £350. It has a 15-litre resin tank and a flow-rate capable of dealing with the needs of a directly connected household of up to 4 people at a hardness of 300 ppm (e.g. Megaflow and mains cold taps). I decided to fit it only to the feeds to the hot water cylinder and washing machine but leave the cold taps and loo cisterns on hard water. I am certain the flow rate would cope with both but there seemed no point in flushing the loo with softened water. My unit came with 3/4" BSP fittings but had two 3/4"-15mm couplings for use if you need them. (I chose to plumb my unit in with 22mm pipes, valves and connectors.) Installation and set-up is fairly simple. They offer an installation video. (but I hope I made a better job of it than they did...) The unit is very effective; reduced my water hardness from 300ppm to "SOFT" according to the B&Q hardness testing kit. Hopefully, over time, the scale in my hot tank, taps, shower mixer and pipework will gradually dissolve; at least the problems won't get any worse. Here are some tips: 1)It is worth noting that the tables for hardness settings in the manual are based upon an average consumption of 100 litres per person per day. UK average is 150 litres (and we use more than that) - so adjust your Regeneration Capacity setting accordingly. 2)The paper manual and the installation video disagree about the Backwash, Brine and Rinse times. Latest online manual says Rinse 5 minutes brine 20 minutes, rinse 5 minutes and refill 6 minutes. This seems to work OK and does not waste too much water. 3)The first screen you see after holding down the "Menu" key for 5 seconds is the status screen. At the bottom of the screen is a counter that counts down in 10 litre decrements from your Regeneration Capacity setting until it hits zero; when it reaches zero it will execute a regeneration cycle at the next opportunity. When you set the Regeneration Capacity, it sets that value into the status screen regardless of what was there before - so you should make any changes on the morning after a regeneration cycle. 4)Manual regeneration has to be done as per the website: [...] 5)Take care when pulling the top off the unit. It is held on by four fragile-looking lugs. UPDATE 2.5 years on... The small turbine that activates the Hall-effect sensor has two small magnets pressed into each side. These tend to rust and the turbine sticks. If you find that the the unit is not producing soft water, check that the regeneration counter is going down. If not, you can do the following: 1 dismantle the bypass valve assembly from the unit 2 remove the pepper-pot end on the outlet 3 with long-nosed pliers, pull out the turbine retaining ring (it is only pushed in) 4 carefully file the rust off the magnets and leave the turbine to dry overnight 5 apply a thin coat of nail varnish to the magnets and 6 reassemble in reverse order.

I bought this to replace an ageing softener that had malfunctioned. Over all I think it is a very good product and it seems keenly priced when compared with others on the market. Ultimately it does its job if your water is soft whether the machine cost £1000 or £300. So from that point of view it does the job and I would have given it 5 stars if not for just a couple of things. These were my findings and others may not have the same experiences. Firstly the top cover is very flimsy and was cracked in 2 places on arrival. I figured that this was not really an issue as it would be unseen and as it turned out I had to cut the back off of it to get it to fit where I sited the box. Not a great first impression but as I say it does not effect its operation. Connections - I think most people if they are replacing a softener will have 22m washing machine hose type connectors. The unit came with 15 mm connectors and new ones were sent out but it took a week which was rather inconvenient. A tip, the two quick release connectors need to be pushed very firmly into their holes before securing with the safety clips. I didn't have them in far enough to begin with but once in its a very secure fitting. Settings - I initially set the machine up with the settings as described in the printed instructions. I was then led astray by watching the video on the suppliers site which had a very differing set of settings. This was complicated further by a google on AS200 which showed another video for this exact same model with another completely different set of figures. An email from Steve confirmed the printed document should be followed. Primarily to test my plumbing I wanted to do a manual cycle through. The manual suggests that either just setting the machine to meter immediate or moving the switch to the backwash position will achieve this. It will not and putting it in backwash will just leave it there for good. Steve advised ...to do a manual wash out you need to do is Change meter delayed to meter immediately Change the REG.CAP to 00.01 Then run about 1 to 2 litres out your cold or hot tap. One final point, it does not mention is that block salt is ok to use with this and I find that much the easiest to use. Over all a very good product just let down with a few things that are pretty easy to fix up going forward. I would still highly recommend this product.

This is an enormous water softener; it will not fit into a cupboard under the sink, however if like me you have a water supply comes in through the garage, this sits in the corner and does its thing quietly, effectively and because it is so big, you can top it up with salt and leave it alone for weeks. I had this fitted by my plumber ( I am personally not capable of connecting 2 pipes together without causing a disaster, however I saw what the plumber had to do and had I been remotely competent, I could very easily have done it myself). As this machine is metered, it only regenerates when it needs to (not every night at a specified time irrespective of use) so if your household goes from 2 people to 10 people and back to 2 again as you are invaded by family for Christmas who then depart in the new year, then the machine increases or decreases its regeneration according to need. Unless you have tried softened water, I can't explain it, it is not possible to describe the difference, other than to say once you have experienced really soft water, you will never want to go back to water that is not softened. (It also has the added advantage of not leaving a deposit on the taps, sink etc.. and if it is like that on the outside of the pipes, the insides of the pipes must have previously been equally as deposit clogged; over time, this will be removed. I previously had one of those machines that uses salt blocks, good though it was, the price difference for this machine is substantial; this is literally a quarter of the price, for a machine that does the same job, equally as well without the need to purchase specialist salt. To say that "I love this" as indicated by the stars is possibly exaggeration, it's a water softener; as functional household kit I will never "love" it; however it is a very good water softener at an outstanding price; I recommend it to my friends, colleagues and family; there is no stronger advocate.

I bought this after years of wanting a softener. We live in Surrey where the water is hard and I’m sick of limescale. Firstly the results, great. Instant soft water and it got softer after a week as I suspect the limescale in all the pipes was removed. Already saving money on soap and detergents and time cleaning shower screens. Softened water does taste a bit different, I don’t like it so have left a tap in the kitchen for drinking. Also left the garden taps on Unsoftened water. This unit, the w2b800, is pretty big, but the bigger the better. The unit is configured to regenerate after a certain volume of water is passed through it(metered). It then runs a regeneration cycle at 3am. You test the water with a kit supplied to work out the config to use and set it up via the little screen on the top of the device. We regenerate every 5.7 cubic meters. For a family of 4 this is about 12 days worth of water. When it regenerates it uses about 90l of water and some salt (regeneration is effectively flushing the resin core that catches the limescale with salty water to clean it). This is far less often and more efficient than smaller units, so fit the biggest you can get in. The unit will hold about 75kg of salt, which I think will last a long time, perhaps a year....again very efficient compared to smaller units. Fitting it was a little complex as I had to divert the mains to the plant room where the unit lives and back again. Getting the right fittings was a pain, the 800 is made for 3/4 inch fittings and flexis in this size are very hard to find, so I called the w2b support team and they sent free adapters to allow 22mm pipes to connect. I then found flexi pipes with built in elbows on the net (actually from a softener company). Set up was ok, but to be honest the instructions are a bit vague in places. You need to read the info on the web and the printed stuff that comes with it...but it’s a bit spread out and hard to follow initially, really they need a nice printed walk through that covers everything. For instance there is a little black mixer valve on the unit that you can adjust to allow some water to bypass the unit, this is not mentioned anywhere on the printed notes and I only happened across it somewhere on the website....if this is open the unit barely softens the water so it’s quite important. The support guy is great, very helpful and responsive. So all in all I’m very happy. Get the biggest softener you can fit in for higher efficiency.

On the face of it this would seem a good buy. Reasonable price and long guarantee but my experience with dealing with them has made me very wary. The machine arrived super quickly due to Amazon not Water2Buy. I discovered that the inlet and outlet fittings come straight out of the back of the machine. I based the suitability of the machine on the dimensions given in the specification. However with straight fittings and depending on the flexibility of the hoses this requires at least another 6 to 8 inches As I do not have that space I require connections with elbows that allow the hoses to come straight up. After several emails to and from Water2Buy they did agree to supply the required connections. However that is where the saga begins. After a week of waiting and not hearing from Water2Buy I contacted them and they supplied the DPD tracking information. From this I gathered that the parts were being sent from the Czech Republic. As the online tracking information was very confusing I contacted DPD direct but they could not give me any idea when the parcel would arrive due to the vagaries of the French and British Customs but said it would be at least another7 days. That will be nearly 3 weeks in transit. I did query why the parts were sent from the Czech Republic as Water2Buy would appear to have offices in the UK and Ireland but have not had a response. This situation has given me concerns about what would happen if there is a problem in the future. Its all very good having a 5 year guarantee but not so good if it takes an inordinate amount of time to get the required parts. I cannot report on the operation of the machine as I have not been able to install it as yet.

I had my 1st. bath last night after connecting up the W2B200. How soft the water, what a treat. Makes all that hard work worthwhile, I would whole heartedly urge anyone contemplating to go ahead and buy because for me this was the purchase of the year. I carried out a hardness test before {250+} and after [40] excellent result. I had a bath last night and noticed immediately. I quickly learnt that one has to be careful its very slippery, just not use to it. The soap went further, overall I felt a lot cleaner when finished. I haven't noticed any difference in the taste of the water but then I do have a water filter for the drinking water tap. I think it would have been nice if we had been given a choice of sides to fit the overflow outlet. The kitchen is always a headache to arrange due to a lack of space, low level, after having fitted fridge/freezer/washing machine/dishwasher ! its a nightmare. I had a 300 Base Unit I could fit it in, bit of a squeeze due to the rather large outlet pipe 16mm ? bit large for its job ! IMHO I also I thought the electrical connector a little fragile, i.e. it came apart too easily I ended up using electrical tape to stop this being repeated . In the great scheme of things this is all small potatoes when the machine does all that it says on the tin, and more. The shower head will not require cleaning of all that chalk etc. , ditto the Kettle / Iron and the toilet cistern etc. But if they did take notice and address all the points above then this machine would be nothing short of perfect Go on, treat your body to a new experience that is overdue, luxuriate in body kind soft water.

Spent quite a bit of time researching the various brands of water softener, including those from suppliers who sell and install (for much greater cost!). Settled on the AS200 as a sensible choice for an average domestic situation. I think I definitely made the right choice as it was quick and easy to install. The unit is small, attractive, appears to be well built and was neat enough to fit in our cloakroom (where the mains water enters the house). Installation of the water supply took about an hour, just cutting out a section of water pipe and fitting a couple of Speedfit elbows. The waste pipe (like any water softener) mustn't be sited where there can be any backflow of waste/sewage but that wasn't a problem, so long as there is an air gap between the outlet of the unit's waste pipe and the drain. Running a power supply wasn't difficult, especially as the unit only draws minimum power. No experience yet of the long term efficiency of the AS200 but nothing to suggest that there will be anything to criticise; would certainly purchase the unit again, so far. Will update review in a few months once the water softener has been in use for a while. ADDENDUM: not related to the water softener directly but to the effectiveness of its use - I drained down the hot water cylinder and completely de-scaled it prior to installing the water softener as there's not much point installing an efficient water softener if its softened product then sits in a tank half full of limescale and the benefit is lost. TIP.....getting the limescale out (we're in a very hard water area) can be a pain as de-scaling solutions only remove half their weight of limescale (we had over 10kg of limescale in the tank !). I worked out the answer by draining the tank and then putting the nozzle of a wet-and-dry vacuum cleaner through the immersion heater opening and sucking out all of the limescale, which can take a long time but is cheaper and easier than paying £250+ for a new tank (plus the labour cost).

Ik heb deze waterontharder 2 jaar geleden gekocht en geïnstalleerd in mijn eigen woning. Tot nu toe is het een erg goede koop geweest met een geweldige prijs/kwaliteit verhouding. Je moet de aansluitset en een zak zout wel apart bestellen, maar dat mag de pret niet drukken. Eenvoudig te installeren mits je handig met koper waterleiding en koppelingen bent, anders zou ik adviseren het te laten doen. Let er wel op dat een dergelijk apparaat ook een afvoer nodig heeft voor het doorspoelen.

En fonctionnement depuis 1an et demi, j'ai le recul suffisant pour affirmer que cet adoucisseur est parfait. Peu encombrant, efficace et pas cher, il répond exactement à mes attentes. Il aura été facilement installé par mes soins dès sa réception et son installation est à la portée de tout bon bricoleur. Cependant, il faudra prévoir la fourniture des raccordements (tuyaux) avec idéalement un bypass et la pose d'une cartouche filtrante est recommandée. Sa mise en route est aisée et ses réglages sont facilités par une application sur smartphone. Le SAV a été très réactif lorsque je me suis rendu compte que le compteur de débit de l'adoucisseur était faussé. Ce dernier comptait plus de volume consommé que la réalité. De ce fait, il y avait trop de régénérations. Pouvant procéder au remplacement par moi-même sans intervention extérieure, le SAV m'a rapidement envoyé une nouvelle carte électronique qui a immédiatement corrigé le problème. La consommation de sel est raisonnable, environ 25 Kg de sel par trimestre, soit environ 30m3 d'eau traitée. Hormis l'ajout de sel, il n'y a rien d'autre à faire... on l'installe et on l'oublie. La régénération est programmée la nuit et s'effectue lorsque le volume d'eau traitée est atteint selon vos besoins (à paramétrer). Cela est différent des adoucisseurs qui regénèrent automatiquement à des intervalles fixes quelle que soit votre consommation, gage d’économie de sel. Enfin, son alimentation est en 12 volts via un adaptateur secteur 220 volts. Pour résumer, petit mais costaud, je recommande vivement cet appareil.

Compré este modelo por sus prestaciones y tamaño, ya que cabe perfectamente en el mueble de la cocina, debajo del fregadero, por donde pasa la entrada general de agua a la casa. Intercalar este aparato en la entrada de la red general es fácil y rápido. Eso si, ocupa un hueco entero del armario, pero vale la pena. El manejo es sencillo y fácil de configurar, en función de las necesidades de cada uno. Y el consumo de sal, adecuado a su rendimiento: un saco de 25 kg me dura todo 1 año. Además, estéticamente es agradable, además de limpio y recogido. Sin duda, volvería a comprarlo.

Installed it 4 weeks ago to test. First it dont have bleutooth / wifi app conectivity. What i thought from description. Actually you dont need that but he i thought. Then overall it wil cost some you some headbreaking to install. I orderded the 1" flexi pipes high flow and they are huge. So needed adaptor fittings to create a extra bypass on my main holland 22mm pipes. Then the manual is rubbish got to the water2buy website help page for a machine tune on your local waterhardness figure. Tune/programme the machine accordenly otherwise you use a lot of extra wather and salt. Hardness went from 10dh to 0dh but, as we use also coffee thee etc znd didnt like the taste of wather so much i used the valve to tune / test it to 3dh wich is fine. Overall good buy till now for that price with some off time invested.

I bought this a few months ago. Installation was smooth and it works perfectly. But the other day, i noticed it backwashed 3 days in a row, and in general, it was counting down water usage way too fast. I emailed the company and they got right back to me. Asked a few questions, and then followed up asking if they could just call me (from overseas) to work it out. I said sure and they called the next day when time zones aligned again. Walked me through making setting changes to fix it temporarily, and then said they'd ship me a new board to fix it permanently. What a big help. I love it when people take care of things like that. I don't write a lot of reviews, but when you exceed expectations like that, I want people to know. Thanks.