WATER SOFTENING SAVES

Water quality is a subject we’re beginning to hear more and more about. We’re concerned about pollution of our valuable and sometimes scarce water supplies. It’s definitely something we must reverse if we are to have quality water for generations to come.

But even where water is not polluted water often picks up certain minerals as it flows through the soil in amounts that make it undesirable for not only drinking but cooking, laundering and other uses. Too much calcium and/or magnesium makes water "hard."

Too often we go on using this water even while insisting on quality in the other things we use in everyday life. We go on using it even when it could be costing us money that we could better use elsewhere. This "hard" water contributes to wearing out our clothing and other fabrics, our appliances and the plumbing in our homes and businesses.

Too often we let our most essential natural resource rob us of the quality that we insist on in everything else. We can get quality water and turn unneeded costs into savings.

Americans and Canadians today enjoy a quality of life far greater than residents of most other areas of the world. We buy expensive new homes or we modernize older ones to allow for better living than ever before. We purchase the latest appliances to make living more convenient. We furnish our homes with fine furniture and carpeting and in many other ways provide ourselves the best life has to offer.

Yet, how many of us ever consider the quality of water that comes into our homes? In many areas of Canada and the United States, water is hard, meaning that it contains undesirable minerals, particularly calcium and magnesium, that can plague us with a whole series of problems.

What Is Hard Water?

Hard water is water that contains invisible dissolved rock, principally calcium and magnesium minerals. Most water in our country is hard, but the degree of hardness varies from one area to another. Moderately hard to hard water contains 60 to 181 parts per million (ppm) of hardness minerals and occurs in more than half of the homes in the U.S.

The average hardness, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is 121 ppm, or 7.1 grains per gallon. (17.1 ppm equals 1 grain per U.S. gallon). Ten grains of hardness minerals in a gallon of water make it really hard. However, many experts claim as little as 3 grains of hardness make softening worthwhile. Eighty-five per cent of the homes in the U.S. and Canada have water at least this hard. So, the chances of your home having hard water is very high.

There are indications water is becoming even harder. The ever-increasing demand for water has lowered the water table, causing a greater draw-off at the surface which raises the natural hardness of water.

What’s Wrong With Hard Water?

It’s the hardness in water that soaps and detergents cannot overcome, that causes gray clothes and helps wear out clothing and other washable fabrics quicker. Hard water minerals combine with soap to form bathtub rings, cause razor pull, make hair stiff and dull, and leave spots on glassware and silverware. Hard water causes peas, beans and other legumes to become tough, rubbery and shriveled when cooked, puts a scaly deposit on cooking utensils, eventually clogging faucets and other plumbing and building up in hot water heaters lowering their efficiency and causing them to wear out long before their expected lifetime.

Much of the hardness precipitates out of the water when it is heated and those heretofore invisible dissolved minerals reappear in the rock-like form.

It’s estimated that the equivalent of nearly 90 pounds of solid rock is brought into the average home by hard water each year. Since the average per capita consumption of water is 60 gallons per day, with a family of four that would be equivalent to a one-pound rock about every four days.

Impurities in natural water vary widely in kind and amount, but many water supplies contain enough impurities to cause problems when water is used in modern homes and businesses. Some problems can be solved by water softening, others by various types of filtering. Not every home may need or may benefit from a water softener. But if your water is hard enough to interfere with good sudsing, it’s likely one will help.

Besides all the other disadvantages of hard water, many household cleaning tasks are made more difficult and time-consuming when hard water must be used. One study (Ohio State University) determined that it takes an average of nearly four hours per housecleaning with hard water. When softened water was made available, cleaning time was cut by 40%, to 2 hours 21 minutes. Over the course of a year, this would save a homemaker more than ten 8-hour work days.

There are several main areas where softened water can reduce those problems—personal grooming, clothing, cleansing, appliances and plumbing.

Personal Grooming

The first noticeable effect of hard water is that it impedes proper sudsing for bathing and washing hair. Soap and hardness minerals combine to form a curd that sticks to the body, leaving an unclean, sticky feeling. More soap is required.

Hair washed in hard water is encrusted with that same curd, which makes hair brittle, hard to keep clean, difficult to manage, and robs it of natural highlights. More shampoo is necessary.

Hair washed in softened water is thoroughly clean, smooth, natural looking and easy to manage. Many persons remember collecting rainwater in a barrel to use for washing hair and clothing. There was a reason for it. Rainwater is naturally soft.

Clothing

The gray in clothing results from hard water impeding the cleansing action of soaps and detergents and combining with them to deposit a curd on the clothing. To try to overcome the problem, one must use more cleaning agents, resulting in greater cost.

The life of your clothing and household linens is reduced by hard water. The minerals in hard water act as an abrasive on clothing, causing fibers to break. Hard water can cut the life of clothing by as much as one third and linens can wear out twice the normal rate, depending on how hard the water is. Softened water can increase the serviceable life of clothing and linens while keeping them cleaner, softer and brighter.

Cleansing

Today’s householder spends less time in the home because of outside employment or other activities. We value our time more than ever. But hard water can rob us of it. Softened water can ease our household chores and cut the time it takes to do them. A year-long study was made at six motels in the Chicago area to determine what savings could be expected from the use of softened water. Savings in maid service, housekeeping supplies and plumbing repairs and supplies ranged from 5.7% to 28.5% -- an average savings of 15% -- attributable to softening water. The greatest saving was in the cost of maid service because softened water had prevented formation of the ever-present curd on sinks, tubs and faucets that was difficult, and sometimes impossible, to remove. Softened water in your home could save for you by shortening the time you spend in cleansing and reducing the cost for cleaning materials. Another thing, softened water eliminates annoying and embarrassing spotting of silverware and glassware. They sparkle with softened water.

Appliances And Plumbing

Hard water can be wasteful in another way that could be extremely expensive. Mineral buildup can damage water-using appliances, such as dishwashers, washing machines, automatic ice makers, air conditioners and water heaters. This buildup also reduces the efficiency of a plumbing system. These rock-hard minerals may affect the operating efficiency of appliances and may make expensive de-liming necessary. If the mineral buildup is ignored appliances may have to be replaced long before they should.

Mineral buildup in hot water heaters may result in a greater use of energy to heat water, since the heat source must penetrate the rock-like mineral deposits to reach the water. Continued mineral buildup eventually may cause water heaters to burn out long before their time.

Hardness minerals can reduce the flow of water in pipes in a plumbing system, a condition similar to hardening of the arteries. Water pressure is seriously affected, often dropping to a trickle. Eventually pipes can become completely clogged, requiring expensive replacement of an entire plumbing system.

In the Chicago motel study, it was revealed that softened water practically eliminated the need for de-liming various appliances, resulting in a saving in money and labor. All the motels had substantially lower plumbing repair costs. Of all the savings, the largest percentage was registered in the area of plumbing repair costs. Half the motels required essentially no plumbing repairs necessitated by hardness minerals once they switched to softened water and showed 100 per cent saving. It is not hard to translate such savings to the private home with softened water.

The Solution

The answer to mineral buildup problems is a water softener that can remove most of the destructive and annoying hardness minerals. A water softener can provide you with quality water to make your living easier. It may be the most valuable appliance you will have in your home.

It will be an investment not only in quality of water but in the protection of all of your water using appliances from destructive minerals. It will be an investment that will actually save you money, by reducing your total expenditures for soaps, detergents and shampoos, by extending the life of clothing and linens and by reducing the need to repair or replace appliances or plumbing systems necessitated by mineral buildup. It will be an investment that will save you much time, labor and, of course, money.

The nice thing about a water conditioner is that by providing savings elsewhere it is helping to pay for itself.

Softened water may well be one of the best things that could happen to your home and your quality of life.

What Is Soft Water?

Completely soft water is water with "zero" hardness. It isn’t found in the natural state, except in rainfall before it touches the earth.

Softened, or conditioned, water is water that has the detrimental hardness minerals removed. It is softened with the use of a water conditioning appliance that exchanges sodium ions for calcium and magnesium ions. When the water conditioner’s resin is saturated with the hardness mineral ions its softening capacity is restored by recharging with a salt solution. The salt (sodium chloride) provides the sodium ions that replace the unwanted calcium and magnesium ions in your water.

Luxury Or Necessity?

No matter how you look at it softened water is a real luxury in washing and bathing, but other luxuries cannot provide you with the savings that softened water can: savings in soap and detergents, savings in cleaning task time, savings in valuable equipment, be it the commercial laundry or your household clothes washer or dishwasher, savings in the life of clothing and linens, savings in water heaters and plumbing fixtures.

Those savings add up to dollars, more dollars in the long run than your initial investment in a water conditioning appliance. Where water is really hard, a water softener may be a necessity.

We look for quality in nearly everything we buy – in our medical and dental service, our cars, our clothing, food, furniture, appliances and homes. Yet when many of us get that quality home with the quality appliances and move in with our quality clothing, we seldom think about the benefits of having quality water that can help maintain those quality things longer.

Quality water—softened water—provided through water conditioning equipment (which you recharge occasionally with salt), can help protect your possessions.

What Can Softened Water Do For You?

If you’re in business it can increase your profit by cutting your costs, because it doesn’t contain minerals that can clog your water-using equipment and damage your plumbing system. For laundries, hospitals, nursing homes, car washes, apartments, restaurants, schools and motels, research has shown that softened water can protect valuable equipment and reduce maintenance costs. That alone is enough to make the investment in water conditioning equipment worthwhile if you have hard water.

But softened water has many more saving advantages. It makes clothes cleaner, softer and brighter, makes them last longer. It makes glassware and silverware sparkle without spotting. It leaves hair and skin soft and silky smooth because minerals can no longer combine with soap to form a curd on your hair and body. Softened water eliminates scums and limestone scale in your sinks and tubs.

Advantages Of Water Conditioning For Homes

• Makes hair soft, lustrous and easy to manage
• Improves sudsing for bathing, clothes washing and dishwashing
• Gets clothes and linens cleaner, leaves them softer and prolongs their life.
• Eliminates hard-to-remove curd from tubs, sinks and faucets
• Saves cleansing time.
• Saves on the cost of soaps, detergents and shampoo.
• Reduces costly plumbing repairs caused by mineral buildup
• Contributes to more efficient operation of water heaters by reducing mineral buildup
• Reduces the energy needed to heat water, cutting your gas or electric bill
• Reduces scaling damage to other water-using appliances
• Provides you with quality water to go with the other quality things in your home