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Hard Water |
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Most homes have hard water problems without necessarily knowing about it. You can know if you have hard water when it becomes difficult to get soap to form a lather or you have to squirt lots of dishwashing liquid into the water to clean your dishes.
Hard water works fine for rinsing down driveways or watering gardens and lawns. It's indoors where hard water cause hassles and real problems. Mineral deposits form on dishes and glassware. Laundry becomes stiff and dingy and clothes wear out faster. Cleaning anything requires extra energy and the use of harsh chemicals that are not only expensive, but hard on the environment once they go down the drain. Energy costs can go up significantly due to scale build-up in pipes and hot water heaters. Scale build-up also shortens the life of appliances and fixtures.
On a personal level, hard water creates a microscopic soap curd that coats skin and hair. This causes dry, itchy skin and scalp, as well as brittle, less manageable hair.
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The map illustrates where the hard water areas are located in the United States. The areas in red have the highest concentration of hardness.
Meaning of map colors ...
Dark blue = 0-60 ppm (parts per million);
Light Blue = 61-120 ppm;
White = 121-180 ppm and;
Red (very hard) = 181-250 or more ppm.
This map lists hardness in ppm or parts per million. There are 17.1 ppm in 1 grain of calcium carbonate per gallon of water. In other words, 1 gpg = 17.1 ppm. Water with 250 ppm = 14.6 gpg (250 divided by 17.1.)
Soft Water is normally less than 1 gpg.
Slightly hard water contains between 1 to 3.5 gpg.
Moderately or medium hard water has 3.5 to 7 gpg.
Hard water contains 7 to 10.5 gpg.
Very Hard - 10.5 and higher gpg.
Unless your water exceeds 7 gpg hardness, there is normally no need for water softening equipment.
To find out about the quality of your water, we recommend that you contact your local municipality or get your water tested. Hardness test strips are available at most stores that have hardware departments. For a more comprehensive test, look here.
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When your water is above 10 gpg (grains per gallon), there are significant advantages to installing some form of water conditioning equipment. Over time a properly selected and installed water conditioning appliance will pay for itself several times over due to reductions in costs for plumbing repairs, appliance replacements, expenses for laundry and dish soaps and related cleaning supplies. You will definitely use less soap by using soft water. You will reduce scum "tide-marks" often called the 'bathtub ring'. You'll have less unsightly spots on dishes, and glassware and your knives and forks. Your heating bill will be lowered because heating hard water in the water heater, causes hardness scale which plugs plumbing pipes and vessels and builds up on the inside of water heaters. Your skin and hair will look and feel better after bathing or showering. Scum from hard water clogs skin pores and coats hair. This can cause things like rash or aggravate skin conditions like psoriasis.
If these advantages appeal to you, there are several approaches to conditioning your water that are available for your consideration. They are presented here in order of effectiveness. The least effective or reliable are presented first.
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1 gpg means 1 grain of calcium carbonate per gallon of water. Sometimes water hardness is listed on reports in terms of parts per million (ppm) or milligrams per liter (mg/l) which are really two ways of saying the same thing. 1 gpg is equal to 17.1 ppm or mg/l.
> 1 gpg = Soft Water
1 gpg - 3.5 gpg = Moderately Soft Water
3.5 gpg - 7 gpg = Moderately Hard Water
7 gpg - 10 = Hard Water
< 10 gpg = Very Hard Water
If your water is less than 7 gpg you don't really have a hard water problem. At 10 gpg or higher you will benefit greatly from installing either a water softener or water conditioner designed to mitigate hard water problems.
Electromagnetic water conditioners are a relatively new invention. The idea is that by passing water through a magnetic field, the calcium and magnesium ion's are altered in such a way that they loose their ability to cause scale. In chemical terms, these ions are changed from forms called aragonite or vaterite that are relatively unstable to a form called calcite, which is far more stable at least at the temperatures and pressures normally associated with domestic water supplies. That means that hardness ions in the form of aragonite are prone to form hardness scale, while the same ions in the form of calcite do not react with soaps or form damaging hardness scale.
When the process works, it offers some significant advantages. Although the water is not technically soft, it has the useful properties of soft water, that is, it won't cause limescale in your pipes thus increasing heating efficiency and lengthening the lifespan of any clothes washed in the conditioned water.
Calcium is an important dietary element, so the fact that conditioned water still retains its calcium content is an added nutritional benefit.
The problem is that while the theory is great, in practice the process has not proven to be reliable. One person can install an electromagnetic conditioner and it will work wonders. Another person will find the process is unsatisfactory at best, and often completely useless. The difference appears to be related to water chemistry, perhaps involving the iron content of water.
Fortunately, there is no need to take a chance. New technology has already rendered magnetic water conditioners obsolete.
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Chemical water conditioners work by adding chemicals to water that either 1) bind with calcium and magnesium thereby causing them to precipitate out of the water or 2) sequester them so they can't interact with soaps and detergents or cause limescale formation.
Precipitation replaces one problem with another. The water is no longer hard, but it looks cloudy and unappealing.
Chemical sequestering has a tendency to break down in hot water thereby creating scale where it is most damaging — in boilers, hot water heaters, and the appliances connected to them.
In either case, these systems also require the addition of chemicals to water so ongoing maintenance is a problem.
For all these reasons the use of a chemical water conditioner for a homeowner is not recommended.
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If "soft water" is defined as water from which the hardness creating ions of calcium and magnesium have been removed, then Ion-exchange water softeners are the only appliances that are able to create truly "soft" water.
They do this by using a special media bed which is usually made of sulfonated polystyrene beads. The beads are supersaturated with either sodium or potassium. The ion exchange process takes place as hard water passes through the softening material. The hardness minerals attach themselves to the resin beads while the sodium or potassium on the resin beads is released simultaneously into the water.
When the resin becomes saturated with calcium and magnesium, it must be recharged. The recharging is done by passing a sodium or potassium salt (brine) solution through the resin. The sodium or potassium replaces the calcium and magnesium which are discharged in the waste water.
The process is not only capable of removing calcium and magnesium, but also limited amounts of iron and manganese as well. In rural areas where private wells are the source of water, installing a quality water softener can often serve as a solution to both problems.
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When water flows past the resin beads the calcium and magnesium ions present in the water take the place of sodium or potassium ions which have a weaker attraction to the beads, thus releasing one of these ions back into the water in exchange for a hardness ion.
Some people find this process objectionable because hard water treated with an ion exchange water softener has sodium added. According to the Water Quality Association (WQA), the ion exchange softening process adds sodium at the rate of about 8 mg/liter for each grain of hardness removed per gallon of water.
For example, if the water has a hardness of 10 grains per gallon, it will contain about 80 mg/liter of sodium after being softened in an ion exchange water softener if all hardness minerals are removed. As water gets harder, the amount of sodium added can become very considerable.
Because of the sodium content of softened water, some individuals may be advised by their physician, not to install water softeners, to soften only hot water or to bypass the water softener with a cold water line to provide unsoftened water for drinking and cooking; usually to a separate faucet at the kitchen sink.
This problem can be overcome by adding potassium chloride to the brine tank instead of sodium chloride. However, potassium salt is more expensive.
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Another problem that results from the use of any salt-based softener is that the chloride component of the sodium or potassium brine is backwashed down the drain. This can cause problems for water treatment plants that must recycle the water to remove the excess chlorides.
Once the salt content becomes too high, water softened by the ion-exchange method is not recommended for watering plants, lawns, and gardens due to its sodium content.
Advantages of Ion-Exchange Salt Based Softeners
- Complete removal of ions that cause hard water
- No formation of scale on fixtures, tub and shower enclosures, or inside plumbing and appliances thereby prolonging appliance life
- Greatly improved performance of soaps, laundry detergents, and other cleaning products
- Clothes last much longer
- Creates a luxurious "slippery" feel to water that some people really enjoy.
Disadvantages
- Sodium content of water may exacerbate health problems for sensitive individuals thereby creating a need to install a reverse-osmosis (RO) system to remove excess salt
- Salt must be constantly added to system increasing maintenance effort and expense
- Chlorides returned to waste water stream cause problems for the environment
If you are in the market for a salt-based softener, check out our page called Water Softeners Frequently Asked Questions.
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Salt-free Conditioners use a process called "Template Assisted Crystallization" to accomplish reliably what magnetic conditioners try to do unreliably. They use small beads etched with patterns on the order of billionths of an inch (nanotechnology) to catalyze the formation of calcite microcrystals from the hardness causing ions of calcium and magnesium. In other words, the ions that cause the water to be hard are taken out of circulation by condensing them into microcrystals that remain inert in the water. Being inert, they can't combine with soaps and detergents or cause lime scale.
Unlike with magnetic conditioners, the process is reliable and efficient. While the water is not technically "soft" because the calcium and magnesium ions have not been physically removed from water, it acts as if it is "soft" because the ions have been changed into a different form.
Unless you have iron and manganese in your water that also needs to be removed, salt-free softeners are the most ideal solution to treating the problems caused by hard water that has so far been devised. They use no salt, require no backwashing so they don't waste water, and they work reliably.
You can access an excellent video that explains the process by clicking here.
You can check out these products here.
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