Whether you have a private well or are on town water supply, a water softener may improve your home’s overall water quality. Water Softening will be very effective on removing hard water minerals (magnesium & calcium), iron or manganese. Small amounts of these minerals can have large affects on your water quality. Hard water can have damaging affects on your plumbing distribution system and create scaling, staining and difficulty in cleaning fixtures, surfaces, etc.
OTHER AFFECTS OF HARD WATER, IRON, MANGANESE
Hard water affects include corrosion and scaling inside pipes, staining throughout the home’s showers, bathtubs, and sinks and destruction of hot water heaters way ahead of their useful life (scale build-up inside hot water heaters can insulate the temperature sensor inside the tank causing them to work much harder to bring the temperature up to the set level). Iron and manganese in water can create rusty or black/brown staining and corrosion in the home as well. For more on hard water, see hard water usgs.
BAD TASTES & ODORS, SEDIMENT
Additionally, there are many other types of systems to remove bad tastes & odors, sediment and many other objectionable minerals and contaminants in the water (chlorine smell & taste, for example). Depending on the estimated water volume usage, there are cartridge or larger point of entry solutions for this.
Starting with a water test will lead to the right approach. For more information on common bad odors & tastes in our region, see the link at http:/bad-odor-taste/.