How To Combat Hard Water On Skin

Treating your dwelling house'southward hard h2o will ensure that your appliances are protected from limescale. I'll be sharing everything you need to know about hard water treatment in this guide.

Hard water is ane of the most mutual water quality issues in the US, affecting approximately 85 percentage of homeowners beyond all states.

While hard water isn't dangerous to potable, it can be incredibly damaging to your habitation's plumbing and appliances. Without consistent cleaning, hard water scale tin can build upwards on surfaces that are exposed to h2o, leaving behind difficult, chalky deposits.

🤔 What is Difficult H2o?

Hard water is h2o that contains dissolved calcium and magnesium minerals. The greater quantity of these minerals per gallon of water, the harder it is.

Calcium and magnesium are naturally occurring minerals that are present in rocks and soils all over the world. Humans need these minerals to survive, and they're most readily available in certain foods, like dairy products, green leafy vegetables, and certain nuts and seeds.

While the trace amounts of calcium and magnesium in our water aren't enough to benefit our health, they're capable of causing significant limescale damage to surfaces in our homes.

Learn more than about the differences between hard water vs soft water in this mail service.

To get an idea of how hard your water is, you tin can refer to the hardness scale. Exam your water with an at-abode hardness testing kit. Water hardness is measured in mg/L (milligrams per liter) or grains per gallon (GPG). ane mg/L is equal to one GPG, then it doesn't matter which of these measurements you lot utilise – they're both the same.

Use our calculator to determine your water total hardness here.

If your water contains 60 mg/L of hardness or less, it's considered soft. If information technology contains 61 to 120 mg/L, it's moderately hard. H2o containing 121 to 180 mg/Fifty of hardness is difficult, and it if contains more than 180 mg/L, it's very hard.

Hardness	Grains per Gallon (GPG)	Parts per Million (PPM) & mg/50
Soft	<i	0 – 17
Slightly Difficult	1.v – v	17 – 60
Moderately Difficult	3.five – 7	60 – 120
Difficult	7 – 10	120 – 180
Very Hard	>10	>180

📋 What Are the Effects of Hard Water?

Hard water presence can take the following effects in your home:

Scale Buildup

The most obvious consequence of difficult water is scale buildup. You'll find limescale deposits on your showerhead, coffeepot, dishwasher and faucets. These deposits are usually milky white in color and almost crude to touch. They're too very difficult to make clean.

Dry Pare and Pilus

Hard h2o contains loftier levels of magnesium and calcium. The minerals from the water can build upwardly in your hair and pare in the same style that they can build up on your water fixtures. You'll need to apply more soap and shampoo to lather with hard water, and soap scum could cause dry pare and breakable hair.

Related: Is hard water bad for y'all too causing skin and pilus problems?

Faded, Scratchy Wearing apparel

Difficult water strips dyes and colors from dress at a much faster rate than soft water. If yous've noticed that your brightly colored wearing apparel have faded after just a few cycles in the washing motorcar, y'all're probably dealing with hard water. The minerals in hard water can likewise cause your clothes and bedsheets to feel scratchy.

Increased Cleaning Requirements

Cleaning your bathroom is a bigger chore when you lot're dealing with hard h2o mineral deposits. Soap scum can build up on your sinks, bathtubs, toilets, faucets and showerheads. The longer you leave information technology, the worse the scale build-upward, and the more hard it is to clean information technology off.

Plumbing Repairs

There'southward no easy way for you to clean calibration build-up inside your pipes and plumbing. Over fourth dimension, an aggregating of dissolved minerals in your plumbing can result in the need for repairs or replacements to sections of your pipe. Hard water tin deadening downward water flow and even cause corrosion, leaks and cracks in your pipes.

Cruddy Dishware

Calcium and magnesium deposits can testify up equally white spots on your glasses and dishware. This spotting can brand your dishware await dirty, and tin can be very hard to remove. Even slightly hard water tin can crusade white spots on your dishware.

⚠️ What Are the Signs of Hard Water?

Yous may exist able to determine that you accept hard h2o from the effects I've listed above. Simply if you desire more than proof that your water is hard, look out for the following signs:

Reduced H2o Pressure

Difficult water can cause a pressure drop in your whole house. If yous've noticed that your showers aren't equally powerful as before, or you're unable to properly run multiple appliances at once, you may exist dealing with a limescale issue. Hardness deposits slow down the flow of water in your pipes and plumbing.

Bigger Energy Bills

H2o heaters can be afflicted by difficult water. A buildup of limescale inside a heater tin cause information technology to accept longer to heat your h2o, every bit the limescale acts as a layer of insulation between the h2o and the system's heating elements. If your heater has to work harder to rut your h2o, yous'll probably notice your energy bills slowly creeping up.

Feeling a Film on your Skin

After washing your skin in hard water, y'all may feel a picture on your skin. This happens when your soap reacts with water hardness minerals, resulting in lather scum. You lot might notice that you lot need to shower or wash your hands for longer if your water is difficult.

Visible Deposits

If you tin see calcium deposits anywhere in your habitation, it's a sign that your h2o is moderately difficult at the very to the lowest degree. Look for staining on your showerheads, effectually the spouts of your faucets, and in your toilet tank.

❔ How to Treat Hard Water?

Washing and cooking with difficult water tin be unpleasant, and the financial bear upon of hardness harm certainly isn't something to accept lightly. If y'all want to care for hard water to achieve the platonic level of hardness, you tin can eliminate the problem before it fifty-fifty enters your habitation.

Hard water can be softened – it'south but a case of removing the calcium and magnesium minerals that cause scale. Of course, this isn't something you lot could do manually. Instead, you'll need a system called a water softener.

Related: Is soft water safe to drink? Find out in this commodity.

📌 Hard Water Handling Solutions

There are three about common water treatment solutions on today's market place to address hard water: ion exchange water softeners, common salt-free water conditioners, and electromagnetic water descalers.

Ion Substitution Water Softener

Ion exchange water softeners Similar the Springwell SS and Softpro Elite are the original, traditional ways of softening h2o. They use sodium or potassium to soften water and consist of two tanks: a sodium tank and a resin tank.

When water enters an ion exchange water softener, the hardness mineral ions are replaced by sodium ions. The hardness minerals are physically removed from the water in this process, resulting in soft h2o.

A salt-based softener requires frequent regeneration to operate in the long term. The resin will eventually become saturated with calcium and magnesium mineral ions as a consequence of ion commutation. When this happens, the water softener will flush the resin, removing the hardness minerals and replenishing the resin bed with sodium ions.

Because ion exchange h2o softening systems use sodium ions to soften water, they require common salt top-ups, too. It's wise to check a water softener's sodium tank every three weeks and top it up with common salt when needed.

However, despite these extra maintenance tasks, the real benefit of an ion commutation arrangement is that it offers a proven method of water softening that'due south guaranteed to work. If you lot wanted to check the performance of your organization, you could merely test your water using a water hardness kit.

You tin buy an ion commutation water softener for anything upwards of $800. Generally, the more expensive a water softener, the better the quality. Cost likewise increases with size. Water softeners for larger homes crave a higher operating pressure and bigger tanks, which makes them more expensive.

Table salt-Complimentary Water Conditioner

Salt-free water conditioners like the Springwell Futuresoft are becoming a more popular choice nowadays for people who would prefer non to add salt to their water. They characteristic a unmarried tank that treats water with a workout media.

It'south important to annotation that a salt-costless h2o conditioner doesn't really produce soft water. Instead, it alters the composition of the hardness mineral ions to prevent them from being able to stick to surfaces and course calibration.

The most popular salt-gratis softening method is TAC, or template-assisted crystallization. In this process, microscopic crystals are formed, which converts calcium and magnesium mineral ions into a stable grade.

Your water is still technically difficult later on using a salt-free water softener, as it notwithstanding contains hardness minerals. However, you get the whole-firm soft water benefits of no calibration . Many people adopt saltless workout systems because they offering an effective means of preventing scale while retaining the salubrious minerals that give the water a pleasant alkaline taste.

Another bonus of water conditioners is that they don't need to regenerate. They also don't require salt meridian-ups. However, considering your water is however difficult after the conditioning procedure, in that location's no way to know for certain that the process has had the desired issue on your h2o.

Water conditioners are very similarly priced to h2o softener systems. Once again, prices vary depending on the size of the organization y'all opt for, only you can look to pay betwixt $one,200 and $2,500.

Electromagnetic Water Descaler

Electomagnetic water descalers such as the iSpring ED2000 are the final type of hardness handling systems available. Unlike traditional softeners, these units don't utilize tanks. Instead, a pair of magnets are used to produce a magnetic field that alters the hardness minerals in water.

Again, a magnetic water descaler organisation tin can't adapt your water's hardness level. It will, nevertheless, prevent the germination of scale.

The effect with magnetic descalers is that they're a mostly untested technology, and they don't always produce the desired results. When you buy an electromagnetic water descaler system, you lot won't be able to test your h2o hardness earlier and afterward utilise to bank check that the system works, equally your water will be merely as difficult every bit before.

The simply proof of performance is a noticeable reduction in limescale over fourth dimension. However, if you already had a lot of calibration buildup in your dwelling house, it might be difficult to spot any new limescale.

With that said, a lack of evidence certainly doesn't hateful that this type of descaler system doesn't work. I'd recommend checking out customer reviews and reading upwards on other people's experiences with an electromagnetic descaler before buying i yourself.

Descalers cost annihilation between $200 and $600, so they're the nigh affordable softening choice on the market.