Is soft water worth it?

October 17, 2012 5:43 AM

The truth about soft water? We recently moved into a house with a water softening system (the water in our area is normally pretty hard), and I really dislike the way it fails to rinse off soap when I'm showering or washing my hands. The information online often seems mixed and contradictory. Are the benefits of soft water big enough to outweigh the discomfort? Or is it feasible to do "partially softened" water? Any relevant personal experiences? Thanks.
posted by svenx to home & garden (22 answers total)

Usually hard water makes it difficult to wash off soap - that is the reason why you have a soft water system. Make sure it is working and filled with pellets?
posted by JJ86 at 5:48 AM on October 17, 2012

You'll get used to the slippery feeling pretty quickly. You'll definitely notice it when you shower in hard water later and you won't like it. In addition to being able to use a lot less soap for washing dishes and clothes, soft water is excellent for your appliances. Water heaters, dishwashers, icemakers and faucets work much better. You don't get that hard water lime scale buildup.

I live in an area with very hard water. A water heater warrantied for 12 years will rarely last 8 because the hard water just destroys them. I just replaced my water heater, it was 28 years old and still chugging along fine.
posted by sanka at 5:49 AM on October 17, 2012 [3 favorites]

I also hate soft water for showering, washing hands, and shaving. But it really is much better for your appliances. Since the house I'd already built, you can't do much to direct the soft water to only some uses, sorry.
posted by stopgap at 5:52 AM on October 17, 2012

I grew up in a soft water area and really dislike the sensation, too. Do you have control over the softening system? I prefer to wash and drink hard water, but I keep a water filter in the kitchen to avoid limescale build-up in the kettle. The downside to this system is that I have to actively descale my other appliances like the washing machine and dishwasher.

TBH, I'd keep it and learn to adapt, as the longevity of your pipes and appliances will benefit you in the long term.
posted by dumdidumdum at 6:12 AM on October 17, 2012

The system needs to be refilled with... something, I forget what. It's not expensive, and you buy big bags of the stuff, and scoop it in every... so often. Check the system and read the manual to make sure it's getting what it needs to soften your water.
posted by Sunburnt at 6:50 AM on October 17, 2012

Sunburnt: salt.
posted by ellF at 6:53 AM on October 17, 2012

When I refill my water softener (with salt pellets), I always feel like it's out-of-control soft for a couple days. Which might not be true, I might I just notice it more, and the water feels slimy and weird at first. (Plus I like the taste better when it's hard.) But if you leave it hard it will destroy your appliances and, more noticeably, your dishware and glassware.

Anyway, you can get water softeners that let you set the level of softening, or put in a type of valve that allows a little hard water into the soft water, or there are different types of pellets you can use in the system, and changing any one of those things may give you results you find more tolerable.

Another option is that, if you were redoing your house, you could pull the lines for one bathroom off the plumbing system BEFORE it gets to the water softener, so you'd have one shower/sink with hard water. I know a couple people with the softener installed on the lines that go to their kitchen and laundry and left the bathrooms alone (I think because they had older houses with weird plumbing and decided the kitchen and laundry mattered, the rest didn't). I don't know about the advisability of this or if they do it in houses that aren't old-and-weird, but my friends like it ... or at least like it well enough not to bother with changing it.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:22 AM on October 17, 2012

Most home softener systems allow you to adjust the level of hardness of your raw water. This, really, just changes the frequency of regeneration. All that salt you put in the softener is actually used to clean-off the resin bed during regeneration. It's the resin bed that strips the minerals from your raw water and "softens" it during regular use.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:17 AM on October 17, 2012

I hate that slippery feeling too, but an acquaintance who sells water softening system told me that's not soap residue but rather is the feel of the soft water on your skin after the soap is gone. I'm really not too sure I believe that (maybe he's totally bought into his own marketing pitch, the truth be damned) but anyway I figured I'd let you know what I was told.
posted by Dansaman at 8:27 AM on October 17, 2012

Pro tip: After washing a load of laundry, run a rinse cycle with about half a cup of vinegar. This will rinse out the detergent residue. This also works for coffeemakers to rinse out the mineral deposits.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 8:50 AM on October 17, 2012

I really dislike the feel of soft water - I've moved house in the past just so I could feel clean again!

I have to say I grew up in a very hard water area and our appliances lasted a very long time. Yes, you will get a buildup of limescale if you have hard water, and that does reduce efficiency and make cleaning more complex, but it's not that big a deal.
posted by kadia_a at 9:15 AM on October 17, 2012

I grew up with the beautiful soft water of Glasgow's basalt hills; a dot of shampoo would lather up great, a tap of a damp hand on the soap bar would render bubbles forever. Soap and shampoo lasted months. Then I moved to chalky Hertfordshire for my first job; augh! Shampoo would never wash off, and a bar of soap would turn into unusable slime in days. Kettles and tubs were ringed with lime, and nothing ever felt clean.

It's what you're used to that you like, so try using about half the soap or shampoo you usually would. Soft water 4 lyfe!
posted by scruss at 10:16 AM on October 17, 2012 [5 favorites]

The 'slimy' feel from soft water is usually the lack of chemical residue from the hard water, although it's possible that you're just using too much soap/shampoo, and it's not rinsing off. Soap/detergents are much more effective in soft water, so you don't need to use as much.

You should be able to set the water softener -- usually there's a dial on it where you indicate how hard (how many ppm of calcium/magnesium) the incoming water is. You can set that lower, so it will leave some of the chemicals in.

You may be able to bypass the water softener for the faucets, although that will probably require a plumber. I really wouldn't suggest bypassing the softener for the entire house, though. IME, shower heads, faucets, washing machines (clothes and dish), and water heaters don't last as long, and you have to spend more time scrubbing sinks/toilets/tubs to get the water stains out. Our outdoor faucets have straight-from-the-well water, and I have to scrub scale out of the dog's outside bowl much more often than her inside bowl.
posted by jlkr at 11:38 AM on October 17, 2012

> The 'slimy' feel from soft water is usually the lack of chemical residue from the hard water

> an acquaintance who sells water softening system told me that's not soap residue but rather is the feel of the soft water on your skin after the soap is gone

I've seen this kind of explanation a lot of places, but then I've come across more sciencey explanations that seem to say it really is residual soap (like here and here), which is contributing to my confusion. I'm having a sort of hard time buying the alternative account since the soft water never feels slimy until after I've soaped up.

I appreciate all of the feedback, though, and it sounds like most people are suggesting that the benefits are big enough that I should just learn to live with it, so maybe that's what we'll need to do...
posted by svenx at 12:15 PM on October 17, 2012

I may be getting off topic here but I'm surprised to hear you like the hard water. I had an uncle who had hard water and I hated going to his house--the water tasted bad, showers felt weird, and the tub was all dirty and gross from the hard water. I guess it's one of those things you'll eventually get used to and then think the opposite feels weird!
posted by masquesoporfavor at 2:08 PM on October 17, 2012

I had an uncle who had hard water and I hated going to his house--the water tasted bad

What? I've seen multiple houses with soft water that had separate, unsoftened taps in the kitchen for drinking water because soft water tastes so gross. I thought that was the one thing everyone agreed on.
posted by stopgap at 2:33 PM on October 17, 2012

stopgap, you've never had Loch Katrine water. Sweet, sweet, sparkly soft water. None of that brackish hard water crap.
posted by scruss at 7:15 PM on October 17, 2012

Stopgap, you sure about that?

From what I saw growing up, the soft water was only fed the hot water heater. Separate taps in the kitchen would typically be for water purified by reverse osmosis, charcoal, ion exchange, or some combination, because the hard water didn't taste great, and softened water (as opposed to naturally soft water) is, as you say, gross.

I grew up with hard water and a broken water softener. I dont miss it, for either bathing, or drinking.

If things feel slick after soaping up with soft water, consider that the difference isnt soap residue, its that your skin had oils on it that the soap washed off.
posted by Good Brain at 7:32 PM on October 17, 2012

I've seen multiple houses with soft water that had separate, unsoftened taps in the kitchen for drinking water because soft water tastes so gross.

Actually, homes were plumbed like that ages ago because of people's misunderstanding of how softeners work. People thought softeners put all that salt into the drinking water, so homes were plumbed with at least one raw water line to (usually) the kitchen tap. Our home is plumbed this way, and it's a huge pita, as our raw water is so horrible we can't drink it or use it for cooking. We're on a well, though.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:53 AM on October 18, 2012

Huh. I know at least one of the times I've seen the separate faucet was in a house from the 90s on city water. Delicious city hard water.
posted by stopgap at 5:36 AM on October 18, 2012

I've recently been learning about water softeners and found the Wikipedia article useful. It goes with the "sciencey explanations" linked above, that the sliminess is because the soap bonds with the skin. The explanation is not well sourced.
posted by Nelson at 9:40 AM on October 18, 2012

I think the water-taste issue is a combination of (1) what you're used to and (2) likely an optimal middle ground, where water that is too soft or too hard tastes weird to everyone. Anecdata: my grandmother grew up in Ontario (hard water) and mover to Vancouver (softer water) as an adult. When in Toronto, one of the first things she does is pour a tall glass of tap water for herself. The taste was the only thing she's never gotten used to, in about 50 years out west. Conversely, my other grandmother lived in the interior of BC, with water so hard you'd get a film on your tea...there's no way that's not gross.
posted by sarahkeebs at 12:45 PM on October 20, 2012