Not everyone necessarily likes dealing with something they don’t fully understand, and this can be true even when dealing with water softeners. While some people might not want to put up with what hard water does to their home, if they don’t know what water softeners do, it can be hard to justify getting one. Even if you own a water softener or are considering purchasing one, it can be beneficial to know how they work. Knowing more about your softener could help you take better care of it.
Hard water actually results from a lot of calcium and magnesium in your water. While these are not necessarily harmful, they can have some annoying effects. Hard water can damage your appliances over time, and can even be irritating to your skin. It can also leave water spots and deposits on your dishes and make your clothing look dull or gray over time. In order to get rid of the effects of hard water, you need to actually deal with the calcium and magnesium that are leaving these deposits all over the place.
Many water softeners function on a salt and bead system. Basically what happens is that salt or sodium chloride tries to change places with the calcium and magnesium in the water. The salt is not harmful, and does not leave the residue that the other two will. What happens is your water goes through a tank that has a lot of beads made out of polystyrene. These beads function to swap ions. The beads themselves carry a negative charge and the sodium ions carry a positive charge, so they stick together. The calcium and magnesium also carry a positive charge, however, and it is stronger than the sodium ions’ charge. So when the water passes through, the calcium and magnesium change places with the sodium because their charge is stronger. As such, the water becomes softer, so to speak.
Softening systems that use beads do need to be recharged from time to time. Most tanks can’t really work while they are recharging, but if this is of some concern to you, you can get two tank systems so that one is always working while the other is recharging.
Understanding how water softeners work can help you decide if you need one or even help you take care of your softening system. If you don’t know much about water softeners and are interested in how they can benefit you, now is a great time to look into them.
Futuramic’s Clean Water Center supplies highly efficient water softeners in Fremont, NE at competitively priced.
