Hard Water
While water quality can be based on odor, bacteria, turbidity, and hardness: hardness is the problem in most of the world. Hard water contains dissolved minerals and hard water hardness is measured in total dissolved solids or conductivity.
But the problem of hard water is the scale that it leaves behind especially in hot water systems, such as the hot water tank, dishwasher, shower heads, piping, faucets etc. This scale is almost impossible to remove and especially shortens the life of the hot water tank as well as increasing the energy needed to heat the water. Scale is a great insulator, the last thing we need, plus it constricts the openings and the pipes.
Hard water can be handled in basically two ways: an ion exchanger, a “softener” that exchanges the calcium ion in the water for a sodium or potassium ion. This usually eliminates the scale but has the attendant problems of the sodium or potassium ions in the water and adding the salt to the “softener”.
The most common other way is to create an electric or magnetic field that basically drives the calcium ion to form a particle or colloid. The intensity of the electric field is the key and if the water is quite hard most of these systems do not work. However, there are systems that do work and these offer the advantage of being “green” in that no chemicals or salts are introduced and thus do not cause a problem for waste treatment.
Hard water is not a problem for taste but should not be ignored since the most prevalent scale location, the hot water tank, is not visible. If the heating elements are electrical, it is strongly recommended that hardness be treated regardless of how hard the water is. It will greatly increase the life of the tank and reduce the electric bill considerably.