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Problems With Hard Water and Acne

question marks

For many dealing with acne, finding a solution can be a frustrating process. You make big changes in numerous areas, from skin products to diet to exercise, and you’re still dealing with unsightly and potentially painful acne sores.

Have you considered that your water might be part of the problem? At Kinetico, we’ve seen numerous clients who switch from hard water to soft water and find major results with skin conditions like acne – why is this, and is there a connection between acne and hard water? Let’s take a look.

Hard Water Basics

Hard water refers to water that contains mineral buildups acquired from pipes and other appliances. The minerals in hard water, which can be found in numerous areas around the country, can leave deposits on kitchen fixtures and can etch or scrape glass in some cases.

You won’t always be able to see hard water buildups as they form, and that’s part of the problem – both for kitchen items and, perhaps more importantly, for your skin. The skin could be seeing major detriments from these buildups, and in our next section, we’ll go over how this relates to acne.

Skin Irritation

The goal of washing the face to reduce acne is washing away the various bits of uncleanliness on your face that have built up over time. But when you use hard water to do this, you’re really accomplishing the opposite – the minerals found in the water are actually adding to impurities on your face. Hard water also interrupts the way typical soaps and cleansers work on your face, and can block these soaps from washing away properly. All these factors can clog your pores and actively make acne worse.

Switching to Soft Water

If you’ve tried a number of other acne solutions without success, getting a water softener might be your best bet. Soft water won’t clog the pores, but will rather help clean and seal them as necessary.

For more on hard water and acne, or to learn about our water softener installation services, speak to the pros at Kinetico today.

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Water Softening Explained

water going down drain

What makes water hard?

Water has a nasty habit of picking up magnesium, calcium, and other metal particles. If it picks up enough of them, as 85 percent of the nation’s water does, it becomes hard.  Water is defined as “hard” when it contains 121 or more milligrams of those particles per gallon.  If 121 milligrams doesn’t sound like much, consider that the average family of four goes through 146,000 gallons of water every year. Every three years, that’s over a half-ton of metal particles dragged through plumbing, with some of it staying behind, building up, and causing extensive (and expensive) damage. Although hard water can be safe to drink, it’s murder on water heaters, other appliances, and plumbing. That’s because those metal particles love to gather into rock-hard piles of gunk in the worst possible places, where sooner or later they’ll cost you money.

 How a water softener softens water

For those who are into physics, suffice it to say that water softeners remove hard water particles by means of an ion exchange. For those not into physics, here’s the plain English version. Inside every water softener tank are tiny beads made from specially treated resins. When the resin beads and hard water meet, a trade takes place. The water trades its calcium and magnesium particles for a small amount of salt from the resin beads. Unlike hard water particles, the tiny amount of salt in soft water is friendly to your water heater, washing machine, dishwasher, other appliances, plumbing, showerheads, shower walls, dishes, laundry, and skin and hair. It causes no problems because it stays dissolved and doesn’t pile up. Once the resin beads have given up all of their salt and collected all of the hard water particles they can hold, the water softener flushes them clean. That’s why you need to add salt from time to time to your water softener.

For more on how water softeners work, or to schedule water softener installation, speak to the pros at Kinetico today.