Water Softeners for Charlottesville Homes
- Do you often find scaly, white stains on your bathtub or kitchen sink?
- Do you see water spots on your glasses and dishes?
- Does your skin feel slightly sticky after washing with soap?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you may have a hard-water problem. You’re not alone. As many as 85% of U.S. homes have hard water, and that includes many in the Charlottesville, VA area.
Hard Water Damages Pipes
Hard water contains a significant amount of calcium, magnesium or other minerals. The minerals have leached into the groundwater from surrounding soil and rock.
While drinking hard water won’t cause any known health issues, it can create costly plumbing problems. When you have hard water in your home, the calcium and magnesium particles can build up as scale on the inside of your pipes, obstructing flow and eventually clogging them completely. It decreases the overall life span of your home’s plumbing.
Scale can also build up inside water heaters, coffee makers, industrial machinery and any other object that operates with water.
Calcium and magnesium are poor conductors of heat, so household appliances like water heaters, washing machines and dishwashers are less efficient when used with hard water.
Additionally, soap used with hard water doesn’t lather well. In fact, it reacts with the soap to form a sticky feeling, whether on your skin, your dishes or your clothes.
Testing Your Water
If you suspect you have hard water because you’ve noticed some of the problems mentioned, you’ll want to have it tested before taking action. Hardness is measured in terms of grains per gallon (GPC) or milligrams per liter (mg/L).
A sample of water from your home can be tested and given a numerical score. Hard water is around 7-10.5 GPG (120-180 mg/L). In the middle is a gray zone between soft and slightly hard.
If your water tests at 1 GPC (17.1 mg/L) or less, you can relax. Your water is not hard.
If your test results are above 2 GPC, taking action can save you money and increase your comfort.
Making Hard Water Soft
One of the best ways to treat hard water is to run it through a water softener. Water softeners are relatively inexpensive and yet highly effective in ridding your water of calcium, magnesium and other troublesome minerals.
When hard water passes through the softening system’s resin bed, it exchanges the hard ions in the water for less harmful soft ones, usually sodium. The exchange eliminates the problems of hard water. Sodium doesn’t leach out into pipes nor react badly with soap.
The result is that only softened water passes through to your home. You’ll feel cleaner after washing. You may find you can use less soap, shampoo and laundry detergents. But the biggest benefit is one you can’t see: less mineral buildup in your plumbing system, thus helping to prevent costly plumbing problems down the road.
Free Water Test
If you’ve been noticing the symptoms of hard water, Fitch Services can come to your home and do a quick onsite test at no charge. Based on the results, if needed, we can recommend the right water softener for your home. We’ll also install it and show you how to care for it, which involves periodically adding salt (sodium).
Don’t put up with hard water any longer. Fitch Services will give you a FREE, no obligation, water test at your home. What are you waiting for?