Water Softener Solutions
Water softener technology will greatly improve your water if you have hard water minerals (magnesium & calcium), iron or manganese present. Hard water can have damaging affects on your home’s plumbing as well as your ability to clean, even though the EPA has no published limits on these minerals. Hard water interferes with almost every cleaning task, from doing the laundry to washing dishes to taking a shower. Clothing can look dingy and feel rough and scratchy. Dishes and glasses get spotted and a film may build up on shower doors, bathtubs, sinks and faucets. Washing your hair in hard water may leave it feeling sticky and dull. Hard water can also cause a residue to build-up in pipes that can lower water pressure throughout the house. The EPA maximum allowable levels for iron and manganese as secondary contaminants is .3 parts per million and .05 parts per million, respectively, as secondary contaminants. Small amounts of these minerals can have very noticeable, even devastating affects on your home’s water quality.
Water Softener & Sediment Filter
The following is a hard water measurement chart. Compare your water test results:
OTHER AFFECTS OF HARD WATER, IRON AND MANGANESE
Hard water scale can build-up inside hot water heaters insulating the temperature sensor inside the tank creating much extra work to bring the temperature up to the set level. This will reduce the life of your hot water heater and likely require early replacement. Some other affects of these contaminants include corrosion and scaling inside pipes, major staining throughout the home’s showers, bathtubs, and sinks and destruction of hot water heaters way ahead of their useful life. For more information on hard water, see link at: https:/usgs.gov/edu/hardwater.
Damaging Scale
WHAT A WATER SOFTENER REMOVES
A water softener is effective in removing dissolved forms of iron & manganese and hardness minerals. To remove particulate iron or manganese, a cartridge filter with proper micron rating will be effective. Selecting the appropriate micron rating and style of filter can be determined by a water treatment professional based on water test results and other symptoms.
Dissolved Iron Staining
For more information on Iron and Manganese in water, see our published articles in Water Technology Magazine at the following link: http://publications/.
