Source: filtersmart.com

What are Water Softeners and are They a Good Investment?

There are no boundaries when it comes to the good health of both your family and your home. A lot of different factors tend to influence our way of life and change it for better or worse. It is in our nature to fight those things and try and improve the quality of life by any means necessary. One of the things that can impact the quality of our lives is the water we use.

As we all know the human body is 70% water and it is an essential part of us. If it is poor in quality it impacts our organism in different ways, but it also impacts our home and everything tied to it. So how do we fight bad water quality? Well, the first task was to filter the bad water and get clean and healthy one, while the other thing was making it softer for ingestion as well as circulating through your home appliances and pipes.

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The first task was easy if you have a lot of bad water you usually simply boil it one or two times to kill the bacteria in it, while the other task is a bit more complicated and it is achieved thanks to water softeners. All the usable water around the world is different, and it tends to have different characteristics from city to city, or country to country. The one thing that is common to most is the fact that water is too hard, and that is where the water softeners come into play.

So these things address one of the biggest problems with water and its H2Os hardness. But what is hard water actually? It is made up of calcium and magnesium minerals that can cause a lot of problems in house as well in our bodies if used like that for a long time. You get anything from clogged plumbing, scaling on showerheads and frequently destroyed appliances that recirculate or create hot water. Appliances that heat the water and have heating elements submerged in the hard water frequently get destroyed thanks to that mineral deposits that stick to the heaters and create a hard scale-like shield that is difficult to get rid of. That is one reason why your boilers, hot water cattle and the likes of them don’t have a long lifespan.

A water softener is an appliance that is supposed to eliminate all those problems using certain technologies. There are a few different types of water softeners available out there – salt-free, ion-exchange softeners, magnetic softeners and reverse osmosis ones. Each of these has a different approach to remove the impurities and we will address a little bit of them all.

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Salt-free softeners are mostly a number one choice. It is preferred by consumers because it’s based on a filter which doesn’t need any minerals like salt or potassium to remove contaminants from the water. These do help in a way, meaning they will prevent scaling in your plumbing to some extent but that is about it as advantages go. The downsides to these are the facts that they can’t be used for really hard water and these will not remove hardness minerals which are there in crystallized form. You will still get very hard water that will affect your appliances, laundry, skin and more.

Ion exchange softeners are a little bit more complicated but a little more effective as well. What happens here is the exchange of hardness minerals in water like calcium and magnesium the culprits for creating scales and destroying appliances, for sodium minerals that are more household-friendly. The exchange happens thanks to the fact that these minerals are ionic and that they have an electrical charge. The entire process is based on the same charged minerals repel each other while opposite ones attract. This kind of water will save your household appliances and make your water a lot softer, but it is not recommended to be used as drinking water since it will be high in sodium minerals.

Magnetic softeners are something that really fascinating and probably revolutionary since they are low maintenance and low cost. As we found out from tx5000waterontharder.nl these type of softeners are really easy to fit and there is no maintenance at all. You can fit these by yourself in 5 minutes or less which is incredible. These softeners use a magnetic field to stop crystallization of magnesium and calcium, meaning that they do not actually remove the minerals from water, but simply make sure that limescale deposits do not occur and gradually disappear. This does not use any chemicals, no filters, no batteries or electricity which makes it as environmentally friendly as it is possible. Its application is exquisite and you can fit it in any home on any pipe that has the required thickness.

Source: freepik.com

Reverse osmosis softeners are suited for removing the impurities from water and best if you combine them with another sort of softener if you want to maximize your water quality. RO softeners filter the water by removing contaminants and minerals from H2O using a membrane or a filter. With these, you can remove a lot of contaminants from your water including fluoride, chlorine, salt, lead, sulfates and much more. With this, your water will be better tasting, softer and most importantly chemical-free. Why did we mention you should use RO systems with another softener? Well idea is that an ionic softener, for instance, will take care of magnesium and chloride and by doing that it will ease off the pressure from the RO system and allow it to have a longer life span.

After reading all this we think that you are all now a little bit more educated and informed and that you will easily decide what you need. If you are living in an area with hard or very hard water the softeners are a must. With them, you will protect not only your household plumbing and appliances but your health as well. Hard water isn’t something to be overlooked. Why wouldn’t you like to have washing or a dish machine that is longer reliable and doesn’t cost you money every few months because its delicate system is damaged by lime scaling? Why wouldn’t you have lime-free, gunk free bathroom with water that doesn’t dry your skin or your hair out? Water softeners are a good investment that will, over time, pay itself twice over in many different areas of your life.

About Jeanette Iglesias