With Christmas coming up fast, there will be many households gearing up to host visitors, be it friends or family, often from far-flung parts of the country. Some may even be staying over, which means they will be using your household facilities.

Of course, you will want to impress by having a neat house and putting on a lovely dinner, but if you live in a hard water area, you can also offer something extra through providing a home water filtration system.

Anyone staying over may drink the water and shower in it, so you could be impressing them with the quality of what you have, especially if they are from a part of the country without hard water and might particularly notice the different feel and taste of what comes out of taps and shower heads in other parts of the country.

For example, the Aquacure Hard Water Map shows that the hardest water is mostly found south of the Severn-Wash line, where supplies rely more on water drawn from chalky aquifers with lots of calcium that makes water hard. 

The exceptions to this are the hard water areas of the east coast of Yorkshire and the softer water of the far south west, which has more upland moors and accompanying reservoirs, with Dartmoor having the highest land in southern England.

By contrast, the north, with its high moors and numerous reservoirs rather than chalky downland, enjoys softer water, with even some of the lakes in the Lake District being converted to reservoirs in the past, mainly, but not exclusively, to supply Manchester. However, even this is classed as moderately hard rather than truly soft, although far softer than water down south.

With Scotland having even softer water, there is no doubt that any guests from up north will enjoy having wonderfully filtered water when they visit. But that is just the start of it. After all, when they have gone back home, you will get to enjoy the benefits of a great filter all year.