In the United States, over 85% of the population relies on hard water for cooking, cleaning and bathing. The majority of homes have a water softener installed to solve this issue. Water softeners are devices that remove minerals from water by using either ion exchange or reverse osmosis processes.
Water softeners remove calcium and magnesium ions from water, which causes hard water problems. Hard water makes it difficult to rinse soap off hands, creates scaly deposits on faucet heads and shower heads, and leaves behind soap scum in the bathtub. A water softener can help with all these problems by removing these minerals from your tap water before they reach your faucets or pipes.
A water softener saves you time, energy, and money when compared to other options such as bottled water or installing an expensive reverse osmosis system in your home. By investing in a simple device like a types of water softener you can save yourself hours of cleaning up soapy residue each day!
Hardness is measured in grains per gallon (gpg) or milligrams per liter (mg/l). The higher the number of gpg or mg/l,
What Is a Water Softener?
A water softener is a whole-house filtration system that removes hardness-causing calcium and magnesium minerals from your water through a process called ion exchange. A water softener addresses one of the most prevalent and devastating water problems: hard water. Hard water wreaks havoc on the modern home. Scale builds up in your pipes, clogging them and decreasing water pressure. Scale dramatically shortens the lifespan of appliances like dishwashers, coffee makers and ice machines. Hard water destroys hot water appliances. The higher the temperature of the water, the more calcium and magnesium will solidify and harden into solid deposits inside your hot water heater. If you live in hard water territory, it can sound like your water heater is popping popcorn. This is because scale has attached itself to the heating element
How do water softeners work?
Water softeners work through a process called ion exchange which eliminates calcium and magnesium from the water. When the hard water enters into the mineral tank, it flows through a bed of spherical resin beads. These plastic beads, usually made from polystyrene, are charged with a sodium ion. The resin beads are anions, meaning they have a negative charge. The calcium and magnesium minerals have a positive charge, making them cations. Since opposite charges attract, the negative charge of the minerals is attracted to the positive charge of the resin beads. As the hard water passes through the resin, the beads grab ahold of the mineral ions and remove them from the water. When the bead seizes the mineral ion, the sodium ion is released. The column of resin strips all the hardness out of the water as it passes through the mineral tank, and softened water flows out into your home.
Water softener price resnable are used in homes where there is too much dissolved solids in their plumbing system or hot water heater (called scale). Scale build up can cause clogging of pipes and valves which leads to leaks and other problems such as:
Is soft water safe to drink?
Soft water is safe to drink. During the ion exchange process, the resin beads do release sodium into the water when grabbing ahold of the hardness minerals. But the amount of sodium in softened water isn’t unhealthy, and actually is far less than what is widely imagined. If you have moderately hard water, for example five grains per gallon (about 86ppm), that’s only adding 37 milligrams of sodium per quart of water. That’s less than 2% of the suggested daily sodium intake. A slice of white bread has around 170 milligrams of sodium, and a slice of pizza has about 640 milligrams. So, comparatively, the amount of sodium added by water softeners is negligible.
If you’re worried about your health and how much sodium you’re getting from your drinking water, there are plenty of other things to worry about first — like eating too many processed foods or not getting enough exercise — before you start fretting over the miniscule amount of sodium added by softened water.