Soft water allows your appliances to operate efficiently, which helps them last longer. You can also use much less dish and laundry detergent if your home has softened water, and you won’t have scale buildup in your pipes and plumbing fixtures. Plus, your skin will be smoother and your hair will be more manageable.
Clearly, soft water is what you want – but does your home have it? Or do you need to install a softening system?
The best way to find out is to schedule a professional test. In the meantime, this easy experiment can give you a pretty good idea of whether you have hard or soft water.
How to Test for Soft Water
To test the softness of the water in your home, simply follow these steps:
- Get a bar of Ivory Soap.
- Plug a sink and start or fill the sink with water.
- Hold the bar of soap in the steam of water so some of it can dissolve into the water.
- Agitate the water vigorously for about five seconds.
If you see a good amount of suds at the top and crystal clear liquid underneath, congratulations – your home has soft water. If the bottle contains only a few bubbles, the opposite is probably true.
Can’t tell? Repeat the experiment using distilled. If you see more suds in this test, your home has hard water.
How Softening Systems Work
Fortunately, hard water can be softened – simply install a softening system, and hardness will no longer be a problem.
Softening systems use an ion exchange process to remove magnesium, calcium and other mineral contaminants. Softeners contain resin beads with ions that have an opposite charge to the ions in the minerals. As a result, the two sets of ions trade places, the contaminants stay behind and soft water flows from the system.
A high-quality softening system can last for decades, though it will need to be recharged periodically with fresh sodium or potassium.
Schedule a Free Professional Test
As we mentioned, professional testing is the best way to determine if you can benefit by installing a softening system. The experiment outlined above is informative, but it won’t tell you the hardness level of your water or whether any other issues are affecting your water quality.
For a free professional test, contact Kinetico. Our expert team can visit your Utah home and complete an assessment of your water quality. The results will show if you need a softening system and if you should consider other treatment devices, such as a reverse osmosis purification system or whole-house filtration system.
Kinetico, a Utah industry leader for over 30 years, offers high-quality softeners and treatment systems designed to last for decades – and our products are backed by a 10-year warranty. For more information, or to schedule a free professional soft water test, contact us today.