Water is essential for life. It’s necessary for hydration, sanitation, and helps create and sustain the ecosystems on which all life depends. Yet for some homeowners, water can have a less-appealing characteristic – hardness.
Hard water has a higher-than-normal concentration of calcium, magnesium, and other trace metals that are naturally dissolved in drinking water. And while not necessarily harmful to your health, hard water can negatively affect a number of your day-to-day activities, such as washing dishes, doing laundry, and even showering.
A water softener can mitigate these negative effects by exchanging the calcium and magnesium ions with sodium or potassium ions.
Could your home benefit from a water softener? Here are 6 ways to tell.
1. Dry Skin and Hair
Because soap doesn’t dissolve properly in hard water, it can linger on skin and prevent the removal of bacteria and dirt. It can also block skin’s pores, leading to blackheads, pimples, and inflammation. The same sticky film can make your hair dry, dull, and limp.
2. Dingy Laundry
Hard water makes laundry detergents less effective and can leave behind a residue that causes colors to fade prematurely, appear dull or gray, become rough or scratchy, and develop a foul smell.
3. Staining
The existence of dissolved metals and minerals in hard water can create unsightly, stubborn stains on sinks, toilets, and bathtubs, and leave scaly deposits on fixtures and faucets.
4. Scale Buildup
Scale or limescale can build up on pots and pans, coffeepots, teakettles, dinnerware, glassware, cutlery, and more, leaving behind a hard, chalky film that is difficult to remove. What’s more, scale can build up inside water-using appliances, such as washing machines and dishwashers, as well as inside the plumbing system.
5. Higher Utility Bills
If your utility costs are higher than normal with no explanation, it may be due to hard water. Over time, scale buildup can clog pipes, causing your heating system to work harder to push water through. Additionally, scale buildup can affect the energy-efficiency of water heaters and boilers.
6. Water Heater Problems
Hard water can lead to rapid and premature aging in water heaters, especially electric models. Heating hard water accelerates the formation of scale inside the water heater storage tank as well as on the tank’s heating elements, which can be costly to repair or replace.
The best way to determine if you have water that would benefit from a softener is to have your water professionally tested. Norhio Plumbing has decades of experience in treating hard water problems, and we can do the same for you. Contact us today for a water quality analysis and a system proposal.
Leave a Reply