I moved into a house and after I shower I feel more oily than before?

December 5, 2024 8:14 PM

I think I have hard water or soft water. I moved into a house and me and my roommate both noticed we feel super oily after the shower, like we didn't get all the soap off. Is my water hard or soft and what can I do to fix the situation?
posted by maxexam to Health & Fitness (15 answers total)

It's soft. It's awful. You could have naturally soft water in your area, or you have a water softening system somewhere in your basement. If it's the latter, you could have it removed.
posted by jonathanhughes at 8:37 PM on December 5 [5 favorites]

Here's a test you can do: link - basically shake a few drops of soap and water in a clear bottle to see.
posted by freethefeet at 8:52 PM on December 5 [1 favorite]

Evil evil soft water! My parents’ house has a water softener and it’s like I can’t be fully clean until I’ve showered back home after a cross country visit. Supposedly, you get used to it? Also, it helps to use vastly less product than you might be used to - especially with conditioners. I have a ton of hair and have to use at least a handful of conditioner at home but with the water softener if I do that my hair gets fully coated and then the rest sluices down my body and it feels impossible to rinse off. So start off with just a bit of product and add more if your hair isn’t fully coated or lathering. Try shampoo and conditioner bars, which help better control excess usage and have recently seen massive quality improvements. Choosing soaps that are gentle and won’t irritate you if a little is left on the skin after rinsing is also a good idea in general.

Water softeners need maintenance, so if there is one in your house that is neglected the problem might magically go away. But people install them in large part for pipe longevity iirc and I would absolutely take soft water over a sewage backup. So talk to your landlord or plumber about this and see if things can be adjusted or changed so everyone can be more comfortable.
posted by Mizu at 10:52 PM on December 5 [2 favorites]

I grew up in a hard water region [calcium kettle etc.] and moved to a softwater region for graduate school. I complained that I couldn't get the soap off after washing. My boss said that in hard-water regions he couldn't get the soap _on_. Clearly this quip has stayed with me for +40 years
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:26 AM on December 6 [9 favorites]

Definitely soft water. Our well water has a ton of iron in it so we use a softener and it definitely takes some getting used to. But the upside is not having to keep scrubbing the orange off the shower all the time. To me that's worse!

If you have a water softener, it's probably next to your water heater. You can test out going without one by letting the salt pellets inside run out.
posted by Eyelash at 4:00 AM on December 6

If you have a water softener, there is usually a bypass valve near it that you can turn to try the “raw” water coming into the house. It is also possible that you had really hard water in the last place you lived, and the municipal supply is just softer, and you will get used to it.
posted by jimfl at 6:11 AM on December 6 [1 favorite]

In the meantime, try switching to harsher soaps or using only half or less of the amount of soap you used to use. What you are feeling is a soap residue left on your skin. The products you are using have a fat content, and that fat content used to bind with the minerals in your water so there was less of it left over. But now it's like you are using nothing but highly moisturizing products.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:40 AM on December 6 [2 favorites]

If you have a water softener, there is usually a bypass valve near it that you can turn to try the “raw” water coming into the house.

If you're renting, do this but you may want to mention it to your landlord what you're doing. Usually the water softeners look like a white cylinder or box, will be plugged into an electric receptacle and have intake value(s) and pipe(s) coming out the top. Close the valves and that should return you to hard water.
posted by Ashwagandha at 8:13 AM on December 6

Turning off a water softener will shorten the lifespan/efficiency of any water heater, boiler or other plumbing systems. I would start with adjusting the soap type/level first.
posted by zenon at 8:54 AM on December 6 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I own the house. And I didn't see any water softener near the water heater. And there is no basement. The YMCA near my house seems to have normal water that I'm used to because when I shower there it feels normal.
posted by maxexam at 9:43 AM on December 6

Easy ways to test your water for hardness/softness:

-Morton salt will send you a free test kit
-EcoPiure will also send you a free test strip
-Home Depot also sells kits in sore for about $6 US and can ship them for free
-Amazon also sells the kits but they seem overpriced.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:57 AM on December 6 [1 favorite]

Put some water on the stove, ideally in a glass vessel such as Corning visions, boil it dry and see what you get.

If you have a lot of whitish residue your water is hard; not much and it’s soft; if it’s brown and smells smoky, you have some kind of organic compound in your water and the oily feeling might be actual oil in some form.
posted by jamjam at 12:29 PM on December 6 [2 favorites]

Mapping all your pipes from each faucet back to where they’re not yours any more is a great idea as a homeowner anyway. Maybe you’ll never need to know, but you don’t want to have to figure it out in a hurry.

Also a good time to find out if you can turn all your water off without a special tool.

And on the way, you might find a water softener.
posted by clew at 4:37 PM on December 6

To jamjam’s point above, there are many things that can go wrong with water!
posted by Tandem Affinity at 10:51 AM on December 8

I have recently read elsewhere, of people complaining about hard water making their hair dry and uncooperative.
posted by Goofyy at 11:34 AM on December 8