Water Softener Reviews

Water softeners have been used for decades now in homes and buildings that have a hard water supply and it’s easy to see why! Hard water can cause many problems. It can be quite costly to have a hard water supply, and it can also be a huge annoyance. Hard water is the result of too many minerals, usually calcium and magnesium, being found in the water supply. These chemicals form a buildup in household appliances, are a huge money-waster, and can even be hazardous to the health of some people. If you are living in an area where there is a hard water supply, there’s no downside to investing in a water softener!

The orange or yellow ring that you start to notice forming around the inside of your bathtub or bathroom sink will be one of the first signs that you have hard water. These rings are due to the over-abundance of minerals that are found in hard water. When the hard water is used, this residue and buildup will always be left behind. However, the ring that you see in your bathtub is also exactly what’s happening within the pipes of the home, if they are using hard water. As the residue continues to build in the pipes, they will eventually become clogged and may break down or stop working entirely! By eliminating these minerals, a water softener will make sure that there are no rings inside your bathtub, or your pipes!

Water softeners can also make the water in a home much more manageable to work with. Hard water has a very difficult time when it’s used with soap and detergent. Instead of working soap into a soft and rich lather, hard water cannot properly absorb and dissolve the soap. Because of this, shampoo and soap is often harder to rinse clean and dishes may also have an unpleasant residue when you’re finishing washing the dishes. By turning hard water into soft using a water softener, soap washes off very easily!

Both of these reasons combined however, lead to the biggest benefit of owning a water softener system. This reason is that, even though they may be an investment at first, they will save you a great deal of money in the long run! Appliances such as your hot water tank will benefit from having clear pipes and so, this could save you up to 15 or 20 percent on your water heating bill every year! You will also be using far less soap for whatever you do around the house, including doing laundry, washing dishes, and bathing! These significant savings may be the first benefit that you reap when you start using a water softener!

There are so many benefits to using a water softener that it’s difficult to see why you would tolerate hard water when you don’t have to! Live healthier, clean less, and keep your appliances working in great condition. All of these things are easy to do with a water softening system!

Water softeners are systems that are designed to turn hard water in a home into soft water. Hard water causes many problems such as lime scale buildup on pipes and water that isn’t very effective for cleaning or bathing purposes. The presence of hard water means that there is an abundance of minerals, mostly calcium and magnesium, in the water supply. These minerals accumulate and cause things such as rings in the bathtub and clogged pipes. Hard water can be transformed into soft water by filtering it but to do so in a home would be very expensive because of all the water that is used. Softening the water is a much more feasible and cheaper solution, and can be done easily using a water softener.

Water softeners are installed directly to the home’s water supply and are used to eliminate the excessive calcium and magnesium ions and replace them with other ions, usually sodium. Sodium ions will not cause any damage to the home’s pipes and will also easily dissolve detergent and soap, turning hard water into soft water. Water softeners work very simply. All of the water used for the home’s water supply is run through either a bed filled with small plastic beads that are covered with sodium ions, or mixed with a chemical solution called zeolite, which is also filled with sodium ions. The beads or the mixture will absorb the calcium and magnesium ions and in exchange, the water will absorb the sodium ions. The beads or mixture will absorb the unwanted ions until they contain nothing but calcium and magnesium. It is at this point that the beads or mixture will need to be regenerated with sodium ions as well.

Regenerating the beads or chemical mixture that is now completely saturated with calcium and magnesium ions is done by pouring a sodium brine into the water softener. This brine solution usually comes in the form of salt and this salt is added directly into the water softener. When the salt is added, it adds sodium back to the beads or the mixture and eliminates the calcium and magnesium ions that were once there. These negative ions are then flushed away through the drainage component of the water softener.

Installing and maintaining a water softener is very easy and can be done by most homeowners. These systems are very practical and easy solutions. They will not only save you the hassle of dealing with hard water but they will also be good to your budget. Installing a water softener will save you hundreds of dollars on repairs to damaged pipes and appliances, due to the hard water running through them.