Hard water is an issue for a whopping 90% of US homes.
It can clog your pipes, stain your appliances, damage your laundry and may even have long-term health consequences.
The good news is, hard water is easy to fix.
Here’s what you need to know about hard water and your home:
Hard water is water that contains high levels of minerals and heavy metals.
The biggest culprits are magnesium and calcium, but hardness can also be caused by dissolved metals like:
Some cities are more prone to hard water than others.
If you live in one of these cities, there’s a good chance your water has high levels of hard minerals:
The biggest giveaway that your water is hard is how it feels in your mouth and on your hands.
Signs of hard water include:
The health effects of hard water are controversial to say the least.
Most sources on the internet claim that hard water poses no serious health threat, but over the past few decades new evidence suggests otherwise…
In a recent study published in the International Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers concluded that drinking hard water may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, stunted growth, reproductive failure, and other health problems.
The minerals in hard water can also be bad for your hair and skin…
After a shower, soap film can stick to your hair and skin and prevent it from moisturizing, leaving your skin dry and your hair tangled and lifeless.
Scale, scale, scale!
When hard water is heated, calcium forms scale that accumulates in your pipes, water heaters, dishwashers and washing machines.
Over time, this can reduce water pressure and wreak havoc on your home.
The harsh effects of hard water wear out clothes faster.
Clothes that are washed with hard water can become stiff and scratchy.
Plus, hard water fades clothing, turns bright colors dingy and makes jeans brittle.
Hard water also makes it harder to remove stains, and you may have to use extra detergent to get the job done.
Soap scum can build up on your shower curtains, tubs and sinks because hard water prevents soap and shampoo from lathering.
Ultimately, that means more time spent cleaning.
Hard water can shorten the lifespan of hot water appliances.
The higher the temperature, the more solid deposits will form.
This can damage the laundry machine by causing the heating element to accumulate scale.
When water heaters become caked with scale, they have to work harder to heat up the water.
Electric heaters can gain half a pound of scale a year and gas heaters can become up to 25% less efficient.
All that wear and tear on pipes, appliances and clothes can be expensive!
You’ll have to buy more cleaning supplies, detergent, dish soap, shampoos and conditioners, not to mention spend more time cleaning.
Worst of all, water heaters and washing machines will need to be replaced sooner.
You’ll also have higher energy bills to look forward to as you use more water to clean your dishes and it takes longer to heat up water.
To protect your home from hard water, you’ll need to install a whole-house treatment system.
This will ensure that all of your pipes, sinks, showers and appliances are free of scale and scum.
The three most popular types of treatment systems are water softeners, anti-scale systems and reverse osmosis (RO) systems.
Water softeners use ion exchange resins to remove calcium and magnesium from water.
The hard water flows through a bed of resin beads that are negatively charged with sodium ions.
Calcium and magnesium cling to the resins beads and are easily removed from the water.
Anti-scale systems don’t actually remove hard minerals but they do prevent scale from forming.
The water is still just as hard as it was, but at least your pipes and appliances won’t break down!
In fact, the anti-scale systems can even clear existing scale from your pipes.
The downside, though, is that they won’t brighten laundry, prevent dishes from spotting, or improve your soap’s lather.
Although water softeners are great for removing hard minerals, they have one big downside: they leave excess sodium in the water.
Fortunately, RO systems remove sodium along with all other minerals, heavy metals and up to 99.9% of harmful contaminants.
They work by combining several types of filters, including:
High-end RO systems also include a final remineralization stage to add healthy amounts of essential minerals back into the water.
The only downside is that whole-house RO filters can be quite expensive, some costing over $10,000.
A more affordable option is to install a whole-house water softener and use an under-sink RO filter to purify your drinking water — that way you can enjoy perfectly balanced drinking water and protect your home from scale buildup.
Cloud Water Filters fit right under the kitchen sink and are equipped with built-in software to monitor water quality 24/7.
They even track water usage and automatically ship replacement filters right to your door.
Click here to learn more.
