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“As a previous owner of a MC250 for many years, I...”

written by on 26/08/2010

As a previous owner of a MC250 for many years, I upgraded to this softener when the MC250 packed up.

This review is for the MC350 softener, not Culligan as a company (they're awful though Waterside (now Culligan) engineer excellent).



At first it would not regenerate on time and seemed to be missing by about four days for the hardness in our area, so we got hard water for that period. After five engineer visits and lots of spares/upgrades etc. It now works perfectly. This was all done under warranty or as an existing fault.



What's great about it is something called Proportional Brining. This means it only uses enough salt to clean the amount of resin used in the filter. You can therefore turn it right up to say, 800ppm and it will use no more salt than if you had it set correctly (but will use slightly more water).

For a family of four, we use about five bags of salt per year.



Be wary of softener companies over-selling. Most of the time you won't need all the features offered on very expensive softeners. The key is in the quality of the valve and the resin, and not much more.



The very kind Culligan engineer has recommended a Monarch softener (around £500), which has a 5 year parts and labour guarantee. They're also not owned by Culligan.