Water Softener Solutions
Hard water contaminants (magnesium & calcium) found in Sudbury can be removed with a water softener. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has no maximum levels set for calcium and magnesium in drinking water, although these minerals can have significant affects on your home’s plumbing as well as your ability to clean. Hard water interferes with almost every cleaning task, including washing dishes, laundry and taking a shower. Clothing can look dingy and feel rough and scratchy, dishes and glasses get spotted and film may build up on shower doors, bathtubs, sinks and faucets. Washing your hair in hard water may leave it feeling sticky and dull. Finally, hard water can cause a scale build-up in pipes that can lower water pressure throughout the house and damage water using appliances.
High Efficiency Water Softener
There are different types of water softeners, including up-flow (preferred) versus down-flow. This can make a big difference in effectiveness if there are elevated levels of manganese or iron in the water. Additionally, a high efficiency water softener will use much less salt and water in the equipment’s regeneration cycle. For a full discussion on hard water, see the link at Hard water.
The following categorizes hard water levels. Compare your test results:
OTHER AFFECTS OF HARD WATER, IRON & MANGANESE
Some affects of hard water, iron & manganese include corrosion and scaling inside pipes. Additionally, you may experience major staining throughout the home’s showers, bathtubs, and sinks and destruction of hot water heaters way ahead of their useful life. Hard water scale can build-up inside hot water heaters insulating the temperature sensor inside the tank causing them to work much harder to bring the temperature up to the set level, thus reducing the useful life and requiring early replacement.
Damaging Scale
SOURCES OF PUBLIC WATER
Due to the town’s switching among nine source wells, you may see variations in the water quality in your home at different points in time. You may see some evidence of hard water scale on plumbing fixtures, iron/manganese staining or bluish green stains (from low pH) in sinks, tubs, etc. All of these are correctable situations with a properly designed water filtration system or water softener installation. Due to the changing water quality as described above from various water sources, it is particularly important that any water filtration or water softener system is designed with this in mind.
