Hard Water - what is it, why don't we love it, and what are some natural coping strategies?

Let's talk about hard water.
Do you have it?  What does it do?  What do you do to make things better?

Getting into the subject of Hard Water seems to be murky waters because there are several different ideas on what it is and the cause.  However, the definition I found most helpful is that Hard Water is water that contains Lime Salts.  These salts decompose the soap and reforms to create "Lime Soap" which does not dissolve in water.  This means that the laundry, dishes, whatever don't get the cleaning power of soap, which means that people use more soap to compensate.  Sounds wasteful.  Eventually, the soap uses up the lime in the water and can get to work, but because the "lime soap" isn't doing anything, it just floats around in the water and as things drain it grabs hold of cloth, sides of the sink, plumbing... which makes things unpleasant.  

I'm blessed with relatively soft water, so I don't have to deal with this.  What I'm wondering is: is it as terrible as it sounds?  

I've seen lots of recipes for softening water, but many of them involve some strong chemicals.  What are some natural, or even better, food-safe alternatives?

In a word. no.
We have hard water, our water comes from chalk aquifers almost as hard as it comes, I have also lived in areas with soft water and on a practical point you notice a few things are different,

1 the kettle needs cleaning every month or so on the inside, or you'll get bits in your tea
2 the shower head needs a vinegar bath every few months for the same reason.
3 you will see a bit of a film on tea
4 the extra soap needed is not noticeable.
5 You will kill your lime sensitive houseplants if you forget and use tap water too much

It doesn't magically stop the plumbing working or cause the washing machine to die, it is in my opinion a made up problem to make people buy water-softeners.

We have hard water.  I assume it is because our water is filtered through layers of limestone rock.

Where I used to live the toilet had streaks caused by calcium buildup until I found a product that would clean it.

The coffeemaker and the ice maker have to be cleaned with something to remove calcium buildup. We use lemon juice or vinegar.  We installed an osmosis water filter system because we were tired of buying a new ice maker every year.  Unfortunately the way our house is designed we could not install a whole house unit.

From research that I have done a filter will not remove the calcium so most water filter systems will not work.  That is the reason for the osmosis unit.

And from the research that I have done it is not good for my health.

Here's my basic understanding of hard water. It's water with excessive minerals dissolved or in suspension in water, and I think excessive depends on who is being asked. I have been living in a house for nearly ten years with municipal water that is considered hard water. Like Skandi mentioned, mineral scale build-up accumulates on things like shower heads, around faucet screens/aerators, and inside my tea kettle (used to but not anymore. More on that in a sec). My wife and I are moving to a new farm, and it has well water, and this ground water is considered hard water. I had a water analysis done, and the testing lab considered it hard water with the amounts of calcium, magnesium and a few others minerals that are in suspension in this ground water. I imagine that I will have to do simple regular maintenance to remove the scale build-up at the new house.

What it means for me is regular scale build-up removal. Sometimes this is easy, like a shower head, as it's right there and easy to remove. Sometimes it can be more difficult, like in a water heater, all enclosed and I can't stick my mitts inside one. On the old house that we've lived in for ten years, we had a traditional tank water heater which was 16 years old and I replaced since it was leaking, and a new water heater is the sort of thing that new home buyers like since we're putting the house on the market beginning of January. Who knows how much scale was on the inside of that tank, reducing the efficiency of heating that water (scale buildup reduces heat transfer, not really what's desirable when trying to heat water). In our new house, we chose a tankless style water heater. Neat thing with this is there are by-pass valves where the cold water comes in and hot water goes out, so I can close off the supply and service line, and then pump a white vinegar solution thru the water heater to remove scale. Neato.

Regarding soap, I don't notice a need for extra soap, I just use whatever I need to either bathe or clean a sauce pan or something. A difference I do notice in hard vs soft water is its ability to rinse soap suds away. My brother has a water softener in his house, and I notice the difference right away when I'm over there. The water in his house has an interesting "texture", it feels silky almost. When I go to wash my hands, it takes what seems to me a long time to not only make soap suds, but then get the suds off my hands, and with this "silky" feeling of the water my hands still feel like there is soap residue on them after being rinsed. When I use the hard water that I'm used to, soaps lather up rapidly, and the suds wash away fast too.

Back to my tea kettle, I installed a reverse osmosis (RO) filter at my kitchen sink with its own little faucet to remove all the crap in this municipal water than I don't want to ingest. This RO filter has a remineralizer, putting some calcium (and maybe another mineral or two, unsure at the moment) back into the water. Since installing this filter, I have had zero scale build-up inside my tea kettle. It's stainless steel, and is still as shiny inside as it was the day I cleaned it when I bought the RO filter some three or four years ago.

I vote it is terrible. Mine is very alkali. It likes to eat things.

A galv cow trough springs a leak in under a year. The spot welds get dissolved by it over time.

White deposits on faucets and shower head. Any metal to metal connections (water hoses, hose bibbs) get stuck. Once had to bust out my brick and replace a hose bib.

Dishwasher trays (the part that slides out) are not functional more than a year.

Rainwater ftw!

Sounds like ... It depends.

I have heard that soft water is "hungry" and attacks materials much faster than hard water. Hard water already has its capacity for chemicals more or less satisfied so it doesn't corrode stuff near as much as soft water. In fact it tends to shed chemicals on stuff it contacts. I grew up in Evanston, north of Chicago; I distinguish because Evanston "makes" its own water so it's probably a little different than Chicago's. The galvanized pipes in this house which were installed at least 65+ years ago and might have been installed much further back (100 yr-old house, was moved about 1950; I've done the only work on it since).  I've cut into the galvanized plumbing three or four places and found almost no corrosion...! It has to be because of the quality of the old galvanizing and the semi-hard water the city provides. That's the only two variables I know of.

I personally don't like the taste of soft water. I _really_ don't like having to rinse and scrub 10 minutes to get the soap off after showering. No matter how stingy I get with the soap, I'm slimy forever unless I rinse 10 times.

We had relatives just south of Milwaukee. They had sulpher water and _that_ I cannot recommend to anybody. Though the adults (I was small at the time) always insisted it was good for us. Echk! Typical BS'g adults! <g>

Most tank-type water heater mftrs recommend flushing regularly - maybe once a year. The way to do this most effectively, especially if you have good municipal pressure, is to open the drain cock and flush withOUT shutting off the heater's supply. Pressure flush until it comes out clear. The faster moving water (compared with simply draining) stirs up and dislodges the most sediment the quickest and gets it out of the WH. If you have an electric heater, it's probably worth taking time to care for it because _potentially_ the tank can last a very long time provided the fittings are installed so they don't leak; that includes the heating elements. Gas tank-type WH's die every 8-15 years, depending on type of usage, local water and phases of the moon.

Happy New Year, Everyone!
Rufus

Rufus Laggren wrote:. . . I have heard that soft water is "hungry" and attacks materials much faster

If the water has a low pH, which depends on what materials it has precolate through before you drank it. Some water can erode lead pipes, which is obviously very harmful.

. . . I personally don't like the taste of soft water. . . .

Why has nobody mentioned that before? You are probably not tasting the water itself, but dissolved chemicals. Truly pure water apparently has a flat taste, not at all pleasant. Where I grew up the water was so hard there were precautions about diving into the swimming bath, but it was a real delight to drink. It sparkled in the glass (probably dissolved oxygen/air) and has a hint of sweetness to its flavour. Hard, calcareous, water is usually also very colourless and crystal‑clear.
We once had fish'n'chips at Kyle of Lochalsh and the vinegar was the colour I am used to seeing in water, and the water was the colour I am used to seeing in vinegar. Needless to say, the water was softer than a marshmallow.

I was confused on my water test results.  It listed Hardness at 326.9 ppm.  But it also had Calcium at 104.7 and Magnesium at 15.9 ppm.  I asked a local County Extension Agent and she recommended I could use the water as is and not worry about clogging my drip emitters.

I live on Long Island (NY), our water comes from aquifers and is moderately hard.  New York City and the surrounding urban counties get their water from upstate and have relatively soft water.  To me, city water tastes like dilute Alka-Seltzer. The same with Florida water.   Our harder water is delicious.  The only build-up I've experienced is when I run a warm mist humidifier when I have a cold.  That has to be descaled frequently, but out shower heads etc, are fine.

No accounting for individual taste, but for me, moderately hard water tastes the best.

My husband's business was water pumps. My understanding is James is correct. Hard water has an excessive amount of minerals.  This is why it's different because different places have different minerals.  This also influences how people feel about it. Some my have moderately hard water with minerals that don't taste bad, or mess with the plumbing.  Or it could be the opposite. One of our wells had manganese so bad there was always black flakes in the water.  
In my personal experience the best water is naturally soft water.  I grew up in Washington state, and had no idea there was such a thing as hard water.  It wasn't hard, but had not been treated to make it soft, it just was.  Most softeners filter the water through salt, so it's not surprising it tastes terrible.   I know this isn't going to make me popular on permies, if I could afford a good softener I would buy it in a heartbeat.  We have tons of calcium, iron and manganese.  Which means there's a lot of build up.  If I get 5 years out of a washing machine or hot water heater I'm doing well.  There have been pipes that needed replacement that I couldn't put my finger through.  Dog bowl always has a crust on the sides. It's extremely hard on our plumbing.  We have a reverse osmosis for drinking, and cooking.  The positive is no chlorine. Other than that, not sure there is any.

We live in an area full of limestone. We even see it sticking out of the ground at the higher elevations where the soil is very poor/shallow. We measured our water at 25 grains (anything above 10 is considered very hard).

We didn’t know at first and destroyed our first water heater in 6 months. We had to replace our kitchen sink faucet and mudroom/farm faucet because the tiny internal check valves were clogged and no water would come through. Basically the lime scale that was settling out as the water heated in our heater (cold water holds more limescale) would flake off and go to wherever water was being used and clog up any narrow places.

We tried managing it but it was still awful. We had to remove the heating elements from our hot water heater and dissolve the build up every two weeks if we wanted hot water. Dishwasher we never used the heat dry but the heating element was covered in white and it started leaking where the line/soap buildup blocked a part that needed to move up and down (can’t remember what it’s called). Showerheads clogged. You name it, it was being destroyed. Our clothes never got fully clean. I had been poo-less for more than a decade and couldn’t do it anymore because the minerals were building up in my hair and making it brittle and breaking off.

We added a salt system to soften the water and now we never deal with any of that frustration. If I ever started over I would pick a place with a good spring!!

Edit to add: we have a frost-free yard hydrant and I fill up water bottles for drinking/cooking there if we don’t go out to gather natural spring water. The hard water does taste amazing and it stays cold in the hydrant so no issues with buildup.

Dennis Bangham wrote:. . . Hardness at 326.9 ppm. . . . Calcium at 104.7 and Magnesium at 15.9 ppm. . . . .

Don't know the averages, sorry, but you can get that to add up to 326.9 by adding SO₄ and CO₃/HCO₃. The molecular weight of HCO₃ is about 61, and there are two ions to each calcium ion (molecular weight about 40), so that will make up the 326.9 quite easily.

This Wikipedia article suggests your 326.9 is harder than London, which gets its water from around the River Lea, which rises about 5 miles from where I lived as a child. They didn't try getting water out of rivers for us; there aren't any rivers there. They dug for it with boreholes.

If you have a swimming bath, be very careful about using a diving board

I think you are right.  Bicarbonate is also high.

Thank you. You won't find much CO₃ because it always dissolves as HCO₃.

According to our water report, we have moderately hard water (water report says 60 mg/L  is soft, ours is 90, and hard is over 180.)  But lots of silica.... tastes amazing, but white scale build up on things that cannot be removed with CLR, vinegar, etc.  I just flake it off, and just replace things as needed.  I filter most of our cooking and all of our drinking water with a lead removal filter, which helps also to reduce buildup on my teakettle.  

Sandy

PS Before i buy a humidifier, I have learned to check and see how easy it is  (or even if it is possible) to get to the areas so I can remove the buildup, if it cant be cleaned they only last one winter.


PPS if anyone has found an effective way to get silica build up off glass, please share!!!  :)