Hard water is water that contains high amounts of dissolved minerals, mainly calcium and magnesium.
Hardness is measured in grains per gallon (gpg) and ranges from 0 to 10.5:
- Soft: 0 - 1 gpg
- Slightly hard: 1 - 3.5
- Moderately hard: 3.5 - 7
- Hard: 7 - 10.5
- Very hard: 10.5+
The minerals that cause hard water are found everywhere in nature.
As water filters through lakes, rivers, streams, soil, and layers of bedrock, it comes into contact with minerals like calcium and magnesium and easily absorbs them.
Although hard water is perfectly healthy to drink, it’s not so good for plumbing and appliances.
Having hard water can get expensive!
The devastating effects on dishwashers, water heaters, pipes, faucets, showers, and clothing can really start to add up.
The higher energy bills aren’t too much fun either.
Plus, it can be time-consuming to deal as you rewash clothes and replace broken appliances due to all the extra wear-and-tear.
How Hard Water Can Damage Your Home
Why is hard water such a pain in the butt?
It all comes back to a little something called “scale.”
Scale is the accumulation of calcium carbonate deposits, and it leaves its mark on just about everything.
Let’s take a closer look at how hard water can damage your home:
1. Scale Stains (on everything)
White scale stains end up on everything that your water touches, especially if that water is exposed to heat.
If a lawn sprinkler sprays the outside of your home, it’ll leave white scale stains when it dries, and it isn’t always easy to wipe away.
Chalky buildup from scale ends up on the washing machine, ice and water dispenser in the fridge, and any number of places.
2. Soap Scum on Showers, Bathtubs, and Sinks
When hard water mixes with soap, it can leave a sticky scum that streaks your shower walls, bathtub, showers curtains, sink basins and faucets.
If you let it sit for too long, it can harden and grow mildew, so it’s best to clean it up right away.
3. Less Effective Laundry and Damaged Clothes
Doing your laundry with hard water can damage your clothes.
Colors fade more quickly and come out of the wash stiff and scratchy.
You might have to run the same load multiple times to get them clean, because hard water doesn’t remove stains as easily.
At the same time, detergent doesn’t like to make suds in hard water, so you’ll have to use more detergent than you normally would.
All of this adds up to more wear-and-tear on your clothes and laundry machine.
To make matters worse, the scale from hard water can damage the machine’s heating element.
4. Damaged Appliances and Higher Energy Bills
Washing machines aren’t the only appliances that take a beating…
Hard water can wreak havoc on all your hot water appliances, including dishwashers and water heaters.
Hot water heaters are the worst because once a layer of scale forms, it has to heat up the scale before the heating element warms up.
As a result, this can lead to astronomical energy bills.
Electric water heaters can gain over half a pound of scale a year for every five grains of water hardness (almost all homes have at least three grains of hardness).
Clogged pipes and drains are where hard water can become really problematic.
Over time, calcium deposits and scale can mix with soap scum to accumulate on the inside of pipes.
This can clog toilets, slow drains, and increase the risk of cracked pipes, mold growth, and indoor flooding.
Plus, it can cause a change in water pressure and really jack up your utilities bill.
Who Has the Hardest Water In the Country?
Some of the hardest water in the country is in the Midwest, Florida and Northwest Texas.
In general, communities that rely on groundwater supplies experience worse issues because groundwater is directly exposed to mineral-rich bedrock and soil.
With that said, city water departments have plenty of issues with hard water too, so it’s far from just a rural problem.
The top U.S. cities with hard water are:
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tampa, FL
- San Antonio, TX
- Jacksonville, FL
- Phoenix, AZ
- Salt Lake City, UT
- Kansas City, MO
Shockingly, roughly 85% of all Americans deal with some level of hard water in their homes!
How to Test for Water Hardness
If you have hard water in your home, chances are you’re already well aware of it.
The dingy clothes, filmy soap scum, rattling water heater, and high energy bills are dead giveaways.
But exactly how hard is your water, exactly?
You can purchase water hardness test strips online that will tell you your water’s level of hardness in minutes.
If you can’t get a hold of a test kit, you can do a DIY version at home with just an empty water bottle and dish soap.
- Make sure the soap is free of detergents, dyes and perfumes, and fill the bottle halfway up with water
- Add ten drops of soap and shake
- If the bottle fills with clear, sparkling suds, then your water is soft
- If the bubbles are small and the water is cloudy, then your water is hard
Keep adding more soap until it makes suds when you shake it.
The more soap you have to add to make suds, the harder your water is.
Although the DIY way isn’t as accurate, it’ll at least give you a rough idea of how bad it is.
Hard Water and Your Health
Hard water is perfectly safe to drink, and some early studies show that there may even be benefits, like cardiovascular health.
However, showering with hard water can be irritating to people with sensitive skin and dry hair.
This can be especially problematic for folks with skin conditions like eczema and dermatitis.
How to Soften Your Water and Protect Your Home
To protect your home from hard water, you’ll need to install a whole-house water softening system.
Water softeners reduce hardness by removing calcium and magnesium from the water and replacing them with sodium ions through a process called “ion exchange.”
The softened water flows through pipes more freely and is gentler on appliances.
If you already have a bunch of scale build-up in your pipes, you can also install an anti-scale system.
This won’t actually soften the water, but it will crystallize the minerals so they can’t cling to surfaces anymore.
How to Rebalance Your Water with Healthy Minerals After Softening It
Now that your water is finally soft, it shouldn’t damage your pipes and appliances…
But what if you prefer the taste of mineral water?
After all, soft water can taste pretty “flat” and most people prefer the taste of water that contains calcium and magnesium.
Some reverse osmosis (RO) systems not only remove contaminants, but also remineralize the water.
Cloud Water Filters combine several stages of sediment filters, carbon filters, ion exchange resins and RO membranes to remove up to 99.9% of pollutants, including hard-to-remove ones like arsenic.
They also use a final remineralization stage to add healthy minerals back into the water.
Your taste buds will love it, and your home will too!
