With more than 30 years’ experience in the residential and commercial water treatment space, Mark Nelson is a Class 1 Drinking-Water Operator and a CBWA (Canadian Bottled Water Association) Certified Plant Operator. As founder and president of Nelson Water in Ottawa, Mark focuses on dealing with challenging water treatment system designs for problem water. He also heads the largest water bottling plant in the city of Ottawa with a delivery network throughout the Valley.
A water softener system is designed to remove the hardness in your incoming water supply. The most effective method in use today is the ion exchange method. This removes the calcium, magnesium, and sometimes iron ions and exchanges them with benign salt ions. This reduces the mineral content that can cause the buildup of scale that can damage your plumbing pipes, fixtures, and water using appliances. Let’s take a closer look at water softening, what it can remove, and how it can benefit your home.
What is “Hard” and “Soft” Water?
Most of the homes across our nation are supplied with hard water, and yet many people have a poor understanding of what that term really means. As we briefly mentioned in the introduction, hard water contains an elevated level of calcium, magnesium, and to a lesser extent, there may be iron present. This cannot be detected by our senses alone, and we can only be sure by looking at how hard water affects our home. When the water evaporates, the mineral content is left behind, and we often see this as water spots on our plumbing fixtures, glassware, and shower screens. Hard water is also the source of scale that we can see and the scale that we cannot see lurking in our plumbing pipes.
How Does Water Become Hard?
Water has a long journey from falling as rain to our homes. It passes over and through many materials along the way. During this journey, the water will go through various layers of soil, rock, and sand that contain naturally occurring mineral deposits. Water is an extremely effective solvent. It can dissolve many materials gradually, and this includes materials it passes through. This is how the water takes on the properties of the calcium, magnesium, and perhaps iron minerals.
How Can Hard Water Affect My Home?
There are a number of ways that hard water can have a negative effect on your home. Firstly, the aforementioned accumulation of scale on your plumbing fixtures is hard to clean away thoroughly. Using vinegar, baking soda, and a lot of elbow grease will shift scale eventually, but it always returns because the underlying problem has not been addressed.
So, you can remove the scale that you can see, but what about the scale that you cannot see? This is a great question. The hard water in your plumbing pipes is still depositing scale before it even reaches your faucets and fixtures. Over time, the scale will grow thicker on the internal surfaces of your pipes and reduce the pipe diameter. This will affect the water pressure considerably, and eventually, your pipes may be blocked entirely. In virtually every case, the pipes will need to be changed, some may be salvageable, but it’s usually not worth the effort. Obviously, plumbing repairs are expensive, and they can really disrupt your home life.
Another interesting characteristic of hard water is that the ions actually inhibit the formation of soap suds. This means that people using hard water have to work harder to get the cleaning power that they need. This affects many activities, including showering, washing, bathing, dishwashing, and cleaning your home. In an attempt to compensate for this lack of cleaning performance, people tend to start adding more soap or detergent. This doesn’t work; it’s simply a waste of money, and the soap scum produced actually causes clogs in pipes.
Hard water is also hard on our water using appliances because it can damage heating elements and form scale inside the pipes. Over time you may notice that your water heater, washing machine, dishwasher, and high end coffee maker all seem to be less efficient. This is because they are struggling to work under a layer of scale that is growing thicker over time. Eventually, the appliance will fail. This is usually earlier than expected, and buying a new machine prematurely is costly.
When we bathe, shower, and wash our hair with hard water, it’s a similar situation. The mineral content is left behind on the surface of our skin, hair, and nails after the water is dried away or evaporated. The minerals then clog our pores and tangle in our hair, and they cannot be rinsed away with more hard water. This is the reason why many of us suffer from sore and itchy skin or have brittle hair and nail issues. If you’re prone to breakouts switching to soft water may fix the problem and reduce the need for a wide variety of skin and hair care products.
How Do I Make the Switch to Soft Water?
As we have shown, hard water is very bad for your home, and the only effective solution is to install a water softening system. There are a number of different types on the market, but the only one that works reliably is an ion exchange system. This exchanges the calcium and magnesium ions with sodium or potassium ions. This makes the water much softer and easier to use in your home. The mineral ions adhere to the surface of resin beads, and they are periodically flushed away during a regeneration cycle. This method is extremely effective. The need for maintenance is quite low, and all you really need to do is keep the system topped off with softener salt.
What if I’m Sensitive to Salt?
If you are on a low salt diet for a medical issue, you may have been told to avoid salt altogether. Most people tend to use sodium (salt) as their preferred ion exchange salt. Using regular table salt in a water softener will not work, and you need to get the right kind of sodium. The amounts of sodium added to the water during the ion exchange process are negligible. But, if you’re worried, you can always use a potassium based water softener salt instead. The potassium is still a type of salt, but it is far more benign than sodium, although it typically costs a little more to buy.
In Conclusion
As you can see, a water softener will remove calcium and magnesium from your water supply. Some specialized water softeners also have iron filters, which are a great option if you have high levels of iron in your water. If you want to remove any other contaminants, you will need other water treatment systems to run alongside your water softener. If you need more information, contact your local water treatment specialist.