Ellon Water Hardness & Quality Report (2026)

Scottish Water supplies Ellon, the Aberdeenshire market town on the River Ythan north of Aberdeen — a fast-growing commuter town for Aberdeen's oil and gas industry, situated in the rolling farmland of the Buchan plateau north of the city, with a weekly market that has served the prosperous agricultural hinterland since the 13th century — from Corby Loch and the upper Ythan Valley upland reservoir catchment, treated at Ellon Water Treatment Works. At 31.5 mg/L (2.2°Clark) and a TDS of 57.6 mg/L, Ellon's water is very soft — consistent with the impermeable Dalradian Metamorphic (Moine/Dalradian) and Caledonian Granite of the Aberdeenshire upland that yields very little calcium to the Ythan catchment.

Ellon draws supply from the Ythan Valley catchment and Corby Loch reservoir on the Aberdeenshire plateau — a landscape of Dalradian quartzite, schist, and Caledonian Granite of the Grampian Mountains with blanket peat and heather moorland yielding very low mineralisation water. At 31.5 mg/L with TDS 57.6 mg/L, Ellon's water is very soft with a low TDS/hardness ratio (1.83) characteristic of the Scottish Water Aberdeenshire granite and Dalradian supply zone.

At 31.5 mg/L, limescale is essentially not a domestic concern in Ellon. Descaling the kettle occasionally (a couple of times per year) is all that is required. The combi-boiler has negligible scaling risk. Washing-up liquid lathers with very little product. Taps and shower heads accumulate virtually no limescale. In older Ellon properties, residents should follow Scottish Water's precautionary guidance to run the cold tap briefly before drinking, as this soft, low-TDS water can dissolve trace lead from older service pipes — a routine precaution in the very soft Aberdeenshire supply zone.