What is Hard Water?
Hard water is easy to spot. That’s what leaves the ring around your bathtub. Hard water is made up of certain minerals and soap. It collects as a scum on your shower walls, it clings to your hair and clogs your skin’s pores, and it makes household cleaning more difficult. Hard water deposits also can clog pipes and cause water heaters to operate inefficiently, and it can increase the frequency of costly maintenance on dishwashers, washing machines and similar appliances.
Remedy: Water hardness is corrected by the use of a water softener/conditioner. The hard water passes through a tank containing resin beads holding “soft” sodium ions. The “hard” calcium and magnesium ions are exchanged for sodium ions, thus softening the water. When the beads have trapped all the hardness they are able to hold, the unit is regenerated (recharged) with salt brine to replace the hardness ions with sodium ions. The unit is then ready to soften water again.