Is the water hard or soft in Macclesfield?
The short answer
Soft. Macclesfield's water measures roughly 45 to 68 mg/l of calcium carbonate depending on which part of town you're in — and United Utilities' own guidance is that scale only really starts forming at 200 mg/l and above. So limescale is not a problem here, and you almost certainly do not need a water softener. Anyone trying to sell you one in Macclesfield is selling you a cure for a disease the town hasn't got.
Also asked: Do I need a water softener in Macclesfield? · Does Macclesfield have a limescale problem?
This is worth saying loudly, because most plumbing advice online is written with the South East in mind, where the water is genuinely hard and limescale genuinely wrecks things. Almost none of that applies here.
Your water comes down from the reservoirs in the hills above the town, and United Utilities split Macclesfield across three supply zones named after them. Millbrook — Hurdsfield, Tytherington, and out towards Bollington, Kerridge and Rainow — is the softest, at about 45 mg/l, which United Utilities class as soft outright. Lamaload covers the town centre and Upton Priory at around 66 mg/l, and Ridgegate covers Broken Cross, Weston, Moss Rose, Sutton and the Forest at around 68. Those last two are "moderately soft". Not one of them is close to hard.
What follows from that is a list of things you can stop worrying about. Your combi's heat exchanger is not furring up. Your shower head does not need descaling every few months. Your kettle is not the problem. And a water softener — a few hundred pounds to buy, plus salt forever — would be solving nothing.
There is a flip side, and it's the honest reason this page exists rather than just being a boast. Soft water is slightly more corrosive to metal than hard water is: United Utilities' own factsheet notes that water below 100 mg/l can be more aggressive towards pipes. That doesn't hurt modern copper and plastic. It does matter if your house still has its original lead supply pipe, which plenty of pre-1970 houses in this town do — because soft water is better at dissolving lead than hard water is. So the local water story isn't limescale. It's lead, and it's worth ten minutes of your attention.
- Millbrook zone (Hurdsfield, Tytherington): ~45 mg/l — soft
- Lamaload zone (town centre, Upton Priory): ~66 mg/l — moderately soft
- Ridgegate zone (Broken Cross, Weston, Sutton): ~68 mg/l — moderately soft
- Scale needs 200 mg/l and up. We're nowhere near it
- You don't need a water softener in Macclesfield
- But soft water and old lead pipes are a poor combination
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