Do I Need a water conditioner

So often do we hear so much about how hard our water is. We are subject to daily commercials, or we question our water based on our skin and our appliances. We all wish that we do not need to go out and purchase a water softener-- lusting that the excellence of H2O we are frequently subjecting ourselves to is noteworthiness. Maybe it is. Do we all need a water softener? Is every body's water hard? Do you need to purchase a water softener?The answer lies in the definition of hard water. Water is thought to be hard if it has a certain amount of dissolved calcium or magnesium. The most consistent statistic that I have noticed through my quest for knowledge states that 85% of Americans do, in all honesty, have hard water. If you are left questioning if your house makes up any amount of that 85%, you are not alone. There are some basic traits of hard water, but the amount my shampoo foams despite usual belief is not the most trustworthy sign of water quality.


In truth shampoo was created to foam no matter what the condition of a person water may be, so testing water by that factor is useless, and will yield inaccurate results. So how do you know if it is time to rescue your family, your face your dishwasher, and your favorite jeans from the perils of hard water? The easiest and most basic exam can be seen in a glass of tap water.experiment with this indicator tonight: Fill up a cup of water half way and let it evaporate. after all of the water has evaporated glance through the glass. Hard water leaves a film, white ring or some form of discoloration. How that for visible proof of the build up of undissolved minerals in your water?Next do a home analyzation. Compare a newer white shirt to an old one. Is the old one dingy and not as bright as it should be? Even more awful, do your whites begin to changes colors after the first few washes? How about the bottom of your toilet, is there a rusty ring, and inside your toilet, kitchen sink, bathtub, are there lines from where the water was? That is how I fist realized that there was something wrong with our water. My young daughter who lives for baths, sat in our master suite tub before bedtime each day. After a few weeks, I noticed the outline of a perfect white line all the way around the tub, and exactly to the spot where I filled the tub up to each day. I did not think much of this, I just thought of the line as a fill indicator, and turned the water off as soon as it reached the indicator. The next appliance to go was the dishwasher. Minerals built up so thick that our dishwasher stopped working.


As we took it apart, we noticed the build up was so large that water could not get through. The idea of dining from dishes washed in there makes me sick now. Crappy water has a negative effect on all water dependent appliances. It forces build up, extra wear and tear, and keeps them from running efficiently. Following that went our water heater. The temperature kept decreasing little by little until the water only ran cold. A plumber call later, our heater was flushed out and cleaned, but our plumber warned us that we are only a couple years away from needing to replace our entire water heater. The only hope to extending its life was the installation of a water softener.Being as frugal as I am, and understanding that it took a long time to even notice that we had hard water, made buying such an expensive system sounds almost financially irresponsible to me. However, when you really think about it, a water softener increases value in a person home, increases the life and quality of clothing, water dependent, and is more gracious on our skin and hair. Even the government knows the fact that purchasing such a system actually increases the efficiency of appliances, and they have provided tax incentives for making the buy. What appeared as financially irresponsible for a moment is probably a good investment for the future. Plus if those minerals build up so rapidly and thickly on our things, what is happening in our body?