Hard water? Bad water?
July 8, 2013 10:02 AM Subscribe
So at our house we have hard water, or bad water, or some kind of water. I don't know, but my dishes all look like this now, wether hand-washed or from the dishwasher. I'm drinking it too (though filtered). What can I do? My wife says it's hard water, and we can get an expensive water softener solution put in. Is this the case? Any ideas on what this and a solution?
This is one of those situations where the news is all good: it IS hard water, but there IS a solution, and it's actually SUPER-EASY and readily-available.
Here's the issue: you have hard water. Hard water + soap = greyish/whitish scummy shit on your whole life. This wasn't a problem Back in the Day, because dish soap had added phosphates that prevented the scum from accumulating on your dishes. However, new-school, doesn't-F-the-environment-up-the-A dish soaps are phosphate-free: ergo, icky dishes.
You COULD get a water softener. But that would be annoying. So instead, go to Target and get some Lemi-Shine. I swear to Jehova, I do not work for the Lemi-Shine corporation, but this stuff is AMAZING: you add it to each load of dishes and formerly cloudy/scummy dishes come out all crystal-clear and sparkling.
OH! AND! If you have this problem with your dishes, you will ALSO have a problem with soap scum in your bathtubs/showers. You can avoid this by either using liquid body wash OR a clear glycerin soap (neither of them reacts with hard water to scum up).
posted by julthumbscrew at 10:10 AM on July 8, 2013 [7 favorites]
Here's the issue: you have hard water. Hard water + soap = greyish/whitish scummy shit on your whole life. This wasn't a problem Back in the Day, because dish soap had added phosphates that prevented the scum from accumulating on your dishes. However, new-school, doesn't-F-the-environment-up-the-A dish soaps are phosphate-free: ergo, icky dishes.
You COULD get a water softener. But that would be annoying. So instead, go to Target and get some Lemi-Shine. I swear to Jehova, I do not work for the Lemi-Shine corporation, but this stuff is AMAZING: you add it to each load of dishes and formerly cloudy/scummy dishes come out all crystal-clear and sparkling.
OH! AND! If you have this problem with your dishes, you will ALSO have a problem with soap scum in your bathtubs/showers. You can avoid this by either using liquid body wash OR a clear glycerin soap (neither of them reacts with hard water to scum up).
posted by julthumbscrew at 10:10 AM on July 8, 2013 [7 favorites]
From my experience with living with hard well water, your wife is correct on both counts.
Basic water softener set-ups, the kind that require you to lug massive sacks of salt to your basement on a semi-regular basis, are under $1k last I looked. It's not cheap but it is pretty close to necessary -- that stuff will ruin your appliances, put holes in your clothing, and just from looking at the photos I'm thinking you're going around with scraggly cuticles and limp hair and other minor physical irritations from it. Not fun. It will create a buildup on everything and require a lot of work to remove.
posted by kmennie at 10:10 AM on July 8, 2013 [1 favorite]
Basic water softener set-ups, the kind that require you to lug massive sacks of salt to your basement on a semi-regular basis, are under $1k last I looked. It's not cheap but it is pretty close to necessary -- that stuff will ruin your appliances, put holes in your clothing, and just from looking at the photos I'm thinking you're going around with scraggly cuticles and limp hair and other minor physical irritations from it. Not fun. It will create a buildup on everything and require a lot of work to remove.
posted by kmennie at 10:10 AM on July 8, 2013 [1 favorite]
Heck, I was coming to recommend Lemi-Shine too. You can order it online, or buy it at WalMart. (Target, maybe, too, but I don't have a Target. And it's not necessarily available at your ordinary grocery stores).
posted by leahwrenn at 10:19 AM on July 8, 2013
posted by leahwrenn at 10:19 AM on July 8, 2013
I put vinegar in the rinse agent dispenser on the dishwasher. Clears it right up on the cheap.
I also spray some vinegar in my hair every week or so in the shower.
Also all over my skin.
I use a lot of vinegar.
posted by The Noble Goofy Elk at 10:24 AM on July 8, 2013 [8 favorites]
I also spray some vinegar in my hair every week or so in the shower.
Also all over my skin.
I use a lot of vinegar.
posted by The Noble Goofy Elk at 10:24 AM on July 8, 2013 [8 favorites]
If you've got hard water, your neighbors have hard water. Find one with a softener, get yourself a gallon jug full, and try it out-- drink it, wash a hand dish with it, wash your hands and half of your hair with it. Like the difference? Bust out another thousand. This is a capital improvement to your house-- it will hold its value for years and even if it needs replacement, at least the plumbing will be ready for the new one.
A recent "Ask This Old House" episode had a bit about putting in a softening system (skip to 16:45), and I linked it in this recent thread about softeners for a MeFite with a salt allergy (as the system is recharged with salt, but doesn't salinate the water).
posted by Sunburnt at 10:29 AM on July 8, 2013
A recent "Ask This Old House" episode had a bit about putting in a softening system (skip to 16:45), and I linked it in this recent thread about softeners for a MeFite with a salt allergy (as the system is recharged with salt, but doesn't salinate the water).
posted by Sunburnt at 10:29 AM on July 8, 2013
If you're worried about drinking hard water, you might want to look at the Wikipedia page on hard water, which has a section on health effects:
The World Health Organization says that "there does not appear to be any convincing evidence that water hardness causes adverse health effects in humans". In fact, the National Research Council has found that hard water can actually serve as a dietary supplement for calcium and magnesium.
Some studies have shown a weak inverse relationship between water hardness and cardiovascular disease in men, up to a level of 170 mg calcium carbonate per litre of water. The World Health Organization has reviewed the evidence and concluded the data were inadequate to allow for a recommendation for a level of hardness.
Recommendations have been made for the maximum and minimum levels of calcium (40–80 ppm) and magnesium (20–30 ppm) in drinking water, and a total hardness expressed as the sum of the calcium and magnesium concentrations of 2–4 mmol/L.
Other studies have shown weak correlations between cardiovascular health and water hardness.
Some studies correlate domestic hard water usage with increased eczema in children.
The Softened-Water Eczema Trial (SWET), a multicenter randomized controlled trial of ion-exchange softeners for treating childhood eczema, was undertaken in 2008. However, no meaningful difference in symptom relief was found between children with access to a home water softener and those without.
Drinking it might actually be good for you. People pay for fancy mineral water, and you've got that right out of the tap.
posted by medusa at 10:50 AM on July 8, 2013
The World Health Organization says that "there does not appear to be any convincing evidence that water hardness causes adverse health effects in humans". In fact, the National Research Council has found that hard water can actually serve as a dietary supplement for calcium and magnesium.
Some studies have shown a weak inverse relationship between water hardness and cardiovascular disease in men, up to a level of 170 mg calcium carbonate per litre of water. The World Health Organization has reviewed the evidence and concluded the data were inadequate to allow for a recommendation for a level of hardness.
Recommendations have been made for the maximum and minimum levels of calcium (40–80 ppm) and magnesium (20–30 ppm) in drinking water, and a total hardness expressed as the sum of the calcium and magnesium concentrations of 2–4 mmol/L.
Other studies have shown weak correlations between cardiovascular health and water hardness.
Some studies correlate domestic hard water usage with increased eczema in children.
The Softened-Water Eczema Trial (SWET), a multicenter randomized controlled trial of ion-exchange softeners for treating childhood eczema, was undertaken in 2008. However, no meaningful difference in symptom relief was found between children with access to a home water softener and those without.
Drinking it might actually be good for you. People pay for fancy mineral water, and you've got that right out of the tap.
posted by medusa at 10:50 AM on July 8, 2013
Lemi-Shine will only take care of the dishes. Meanwhile that crust is going to build up on everything else the water touches--the taps, the sinks, the toilet, your hair, inside your appliances, etc. It's totally worth it to spring for a water treatment system. A family member used budgetwater.com and recommended them to us; we used them and were extremely satisfied with their service and prices. You send them a water sample and they tell you what you need. It may or may not be a water softener. They actually ended up telling us we needed something way less expensive than we were planning to get.
posted by HotToddy at 10:55 AM on July 8, 2013
posted by HotToddy at 10:55 AM on July 8, 2013
My home where I've lived for 15 years has hard water. I looked into water softener systems once or twice, but my god, what a pain (and many, though not all of them, salinate the water, which can be problematic in its own right). Instead I installed a whole-house water filtration system with filters that reduce 'scale' (the buildup of the minerals that precipitate out of the water). That's like a couple hundred bucks to have installed by a plumber, and the filters run about $20-$25 each (I replace them every 3 to 4 months). It does not completely eliminate scale, but the improvement has been noticeable.
Now, the mineral content of my water is not super-high, so this solution works for me but may not be appropriate for very hard water. I would get the water tested first to see just how hard it is before settling on one system or another.
posted by fikri at 11:19 AM on July 8, 2013 [1 favorite]
Now, the mineral content of my water is not super-high, so this solution works for me but may not be appropriate for very hard water. I would get the water tested first to see just how hard it is before settling on one system or another.
posted by fikri at 11:19 AM on July 8, 2013 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Tremendous help here, everyone. Thanks so much.
posted by xmutex at 11:26 AM on July 8, 2013
posted by xmutex at 11:26 AM on July 8, 2013
Our household also suffers from the scaley effects of hard water, in fact I am the asker in the question that Sunburnt linked to. We have not yet decided on wether or not to get a water softener but I can tell you from sad, scaley experience that Lemi Shine products are not always the magic bullet. They help, but at least in our case, they do not completely solve our hard water problems.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 11:46 AM on July 8, 2013
posted by WalkerWestridge at 11:46 AM on July 8, 2013
Here's a post from the blue that is (kinda) related.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 11:54 AM on July 8, 2013
posted by ArgentCorvid at 11:54 AM on July 8, 2013
Seriously just use vinegar in your rinse water.
posted by windykites at 12:38 PM on July 8, 2013
posted by windykites at 12:38 PM on July 8, 2013
I grew up with hard well water. We had a softener and put up with the taste of the tap water. (No fancy filters then.)
Hard water will stain your clothes and make your shower yucky, so I recommend a softener. Yes, they are a pain. The words "The softener is going through a cycle!" were not happy ones in our house! Maybe times have changed there, as well.
posted by jgirl at 12:54 PM on July 8, 2013
Hard water will stain your clothes and make your shower yucky, so I recommend a softener. Yes, they are a pain. The words "The softener is going through a cycle!" were not happy ones in our house! Maybe times have changed there, as well.
posted by jgirl at 12:54 PM on July 8, 2013
Response by poster: What solutions do you guys have for dealing w/ the shower aspect of this?
posted by xmutex at 12:56 PM on July 8, 2013
posted by xmutex at 12:56 PM on July 8, 2013
Ever use CLR Bath and Kitchen? It comes in a yellow bottle and I find it works well with hard water stains, soap scum, etc. in the shower. The CLR full strength in the grey bottle also does the trick, of course...
posted by MeatheadBrokeMyChair at 1:12 PM on July 8, 2013
posted by MeatheadBrokeMyChair at 1:12 PM on July 8, 2013
medusa: "Drinking it might actually be good for you. People pay for fancy mineral water, and you've got that right out of the tap."
Yes, but it ruins your appliances and clothes and dishes. In what can be extremely expensive ways, hello expensive dead water heater!
OP, those are hard water stains. I have a whole-house water softener, it's not very expensive, the sacks of salt are not very expensive, and it certainly pays for itself over the life of your appliances and plumbing components. My water is VERY hard and our softener just softens it enough for things not to get ruined, but it still tastes deliciously mineraly and I still have to vinegar-soak my faucet aerators periodically. Everyone around here has water softeners so there are a lot of options and competition; it sounds like, if you're on city water, that may be the case near you too. (Do your local hardware stores have giant sacks of salt piled up outside all year round? Then yes, hard municipal water.) A whole-house water softener will solve your shower problems. Ask your neighbors if they have water softeners and, if so, who they use. There will probably be a couple of local places that people trust and feel are priced appropriately.
The hard water is healthy for you (and many people do like the taste), so some people get their whole-house softener put in EXCEPT for the kitchen cold tap, so they can drink unsoftened water.
The softener is definitely not a pain. Every 12 weeks I dump some sacks of salt in there (which is not my favorite chore, but not a big deal). I can pick them up at Target, the grocery store, the hardware store, etc., so it's not a special trip or anything. (But! I can also pay $17/delivery to have it delivered on a schedule. It costs like $13 if I go get it myself.) I have a recurring alert in my calendar to remind me to check the salt level every 12 weeks. The softener "cycles" in the middle of the night -- they all have timers now -- and it takes no more than 15 minutes. We never notice it. Mine is actually old and stupid and the timer gets reset every time the power goes out because it has no battery backup (they allllll have battery backup now), so mine actually "cycles" at 2 p.m. instead of 2 a.m. but we still never really notice. It's basically maintenance-free other than the salt. I've lived in this house 10 years and paid $70 at one point to have the guy come out and replace some valves when their seals got weak. That's been the sum total of my expense and interaction with the softener other than the salt. (Obviously mine came with the house so it was already here and I didn't have to pay to install, but they're not really high-tech, hard-to-maintain systems once they're in!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:13 PM on July 8, 2013 [1 favorite]
Yes, but it ruins your appliances and clothes and dishes. In what can be extremely expensive ways, hello expensive dead water heater!
OP, those are hard water stains. I have a whole-house water softener, it's not very expensive, the sacks of salt are not very expensive, and it certainly pays for itself over the life of your appliances and plumbing components. My water is VERY hard and our softener just softens it enough for things not to get ruined, but it still tastes deliciously mineraly and I still have to vinegar-soak my faucet aerators periodically. Everyone around here has water softeners so there are a lot of options and competition; it sounds like, if you're on city water, that may be the case near you too. (Do your local hardware stores have giant sacks of salt piled up outside all year round? Then yes, hard municipal water.) A whole-house water softener will solve your shower problems. Ask your neighbors if they have water softeners and, if so, who they use. There will probably be a couple of local places that people trust and feel are priced appropriately.
The hard water is healthy for you (and many people do like the taste), so some people get their whole-house softener put in EXCEPT for the kitchen cold tap, so they can drink unsoftened water.
The softener is definitely not a pain. Every 12 weeks I dump some sacks of salt in there (which is not my favorite chore, but not a big deal). I can pick them up at Target, the grocery store, the hardware store, etc., so it's not a special trip or anything. (But! I can also pay $17/delivery to have it delivered on a schedule. It costs like $13 if I go get it myself.) I have a recurring alert in my calendar to remind me to check the salt level every 12 weeks. The softener "cycles" in the middle of the night -- they all have timers now -- and it takes no more than 15 minutes. We never notice it. Mine is actually old and stupid and the timer gets reset every time the power goes out because it has no battery backup (they allllll have battery backup now), so mine actually "cycles" at 2 p.m. instead of 2 a.m. but we still never really notice. It's basically maintenance-free other than the salt. I've lived in this house 10 years and paid $70 at one point to have the guy come out and replace some valves when their seals got weak. That's been the sum total of my expense and interaction with the softener other than the salt. (Obviously mine came with the house so it was already here and I didn't have to pay to install, but they're not really high-tech, hard-to-maintain systems once they're in!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:13 PM on July 8, 2013 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Yes, but it ruins your appliances and clothes and dishes. In what can be extremely expensive ways, hello expensive dead water heater!
We're actually having issues w/ our water heater-- pilot light goes out after a few days, restarts OK, goes out again. I wonder if it's related. Crap. I'm just going to take off and nuke the site from orbit.
posted by xmutex at 2:06 PM on July 8, 2013
We're actually having issues w/ our water heater-- pilot light goes out after a few days, restarts OK, goes out again. I wonder if it's related. Crap. I'm just going to take off and nuke the site from orbit.
posted by xmutex at 2:06 PM on July 8, 2013
We have lived in may places. Some had hard water. We ALWAYS signed up for a service. We handled no bags of salt, and never had water availability interrupted by the softener doing anything to service itself. (Not sure what the poster referred to.)
posted by Cranberry at 2:33 PM on July 8, 2013
posted by Cranberry at 2:33 PM on July 8, 2013
Yes, you can also sign up for a service like Culligan. We did this for years before buying a proper system. I'm sure they have different types of equipment for different situations, but for us, once a month they came and swapped out a metal resin tank. We never had to deal with salt or recharging cycles. So it was convenient, but on the other hand the water sucked (a LOT) compared to what we have now. And for the money we spent on the service over lo those many years, we could have bought our own system many times over. So my strong recommendation is to consult with someone like the aforementioned budgetwater.com to see what you need, and just go for it.
posted by HotToddy at 3:27 PM on July 8, 2013
posted by HotToddy at 3:27 PM on July 8, 2013
Just put in one of these shower filters and love it. And for less than $25 dollars for a filter that's scheduled to last 6 months.
posted by TG_Plackenfatz at 3:56 PM on July 8, 2013
posted by TG_Plackenfatz at 3:56 PM on July 8, 2013
FYI, I was told by several people who installed water softeners that their scale problems actually reversed after several months. Apparently it's true, from what I've seen with my in-laws two-year old softener. Their dishwasher, washing machine, shower walls, etc. always looked gross, in spite of being cleaned regularly, but now look normal.
YMMV
posted by BlueHorse at 5:07 PM on July 8, 2013
YMMV
posted by BlueHorse at 5:07 PM on July 8, 2013
The video I linked above explains this very well, but the recycle occurs when the resin beads that have trapped the minerals need to get rid of them. The system flushes the resin with saltwater, and that gets the resin to release the minerals into the saltwater. The saltwater is flushed, and now the resin beads is ready to capture more minerals from your house water. I'm not sure what chemistry or ion-exchange or whatnot is going on there, but it's a simple process.
posted by Sunburnt at 11:10 AM on July 9, 2013
posted by Sunburnt at 11:10 AM on July 9, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by subajestad at 10:10 AM on July 8, 2013 [6 favorites]