Water Softening Benefits to be Studied...

The effect of hard water around the home can increase heating bills by hundreds of dollars a year. Simply adding a water softener is a great way to combat these effects and reduce the build-up of limescale and hard water stains.

The effects of softening water are now being studied at WQA Aquatech USA. The conference and exhibition will be held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, March 9 - 12, 2010.

One of the best water filters around at the moment is the Pelican PC600 Premium whole House Water Softener. Click on the image below for more information...

The results of the conference will be very revealing and I'm sure will confirm that hard water continues to be an ever increasing evvironmental issue due to the extra energy is costs to heat homes and businesses.

The full article about the conference can be found at http://www.watertechonline.com/news.asp?N_ID=73367

If you have any comments about this post feel free to add them below - I be happy to hear your thoughts.

Hard Water Stains - What Does The Terminator Have To Do With Them?

I never though I would do a blog post and mention Arnold Schwarzenegger, but here goes... California has recently passed laws giving local officials more power to remove water softeners from peoples homes.

These devices can help to remove minerals that cause the ugly hard water stains that form around the home.

SACRAMENTO, CA — In what one newspaper called “a jab at the Culligan Man,” the California Assembly this week passed a bill, known as AB 1366, that will give local government agencies more power to ban residential water softeners and remove existing ones, The Los Angeles Times reported September 10.

AB 1366, sponsored by Assemblyman Michael Feuer, D-Los Angeles, was among “a flurry of measures” that state lawmakers were trying to push through before the end of the legislative session at midnight on September 11, the newspaper said. It could not be determined immediately how the state Senate was acting on the bill. Passage in the Senate would mean it would go to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for his signature.

The measure has been opposed vigorously by the water treatment industry, represented by the national Water Quality Association, the regional Pacific Water Quality Association, and dealers, suppliers and manufacturers of softeners.

It has been supported by California’s municipal water and wastewater agencies, which insist that the chlorides discharged by water softeners in their regeneration cycle make wastewater more difficult and expensive to treat and pollute downstream water sources.

Opponents said the bill unfairly singled out residential water softeners as sources of salinity in wastewater. They also tried to persuade lawmakers that a more reasonable solution was to work with the industry in changing consumers’ softener equipment to more salt-efficient designs, and to identify large institutional salinity sources.

The industry sought to persuade the public that AB 1366 was an unwarranted intrusion of state regulation that would only result in hard water for the estimated one-quarter of Californians who now have residential softeners. The Times article said executives of Culligan International, the Rosemont, IL-based manufacturer of water softeners that also maintains a large dealer network, criticized the bill, according to the newspaper, as being “a Big Government grab at private property.”

A similar measure passed both the state Senate and Assembly last fall, but it was vetoed by the governor and never became law.

A few local governments and water agencies in California and across the nation have instituted softener bans or restrictions that apply only to softener owners in those areas.

Source: http://www.watertechonline.com/news.asp?N_ID=72562


If you are affected by these recent laws, do not worry. There are plently of other devices available these days that are just as effective at removing hard water minerals as well as eliminating other potentially harmful toxins.

For more information, see my blog post link below on the different types of water filters and softeners currently on the market, and how they can improve your water supply.

http://hardwaterstainstips.blogspot.com/2008/12/hard-water-stains-water-filters.html

If the recent ban affects you tell me what you think about it? Leave a blog post below, I love to hear your thoughts!

How The Softening Process Works...

It is often desirable to soften hard water, as it does not readily form lather with soap. Soap is wasted when trying to form lather, and in the process, scum forms. Hard water may be treated to reduce the effects of scaling and to make it more suitable for laundry and bathing.

The Process

A water softener works on the principle of cation or ion exchange in which ions of the hardness minerals are exchanged for sodium or potassium ions, effectively reducing the concentration of hardness minerals to tolerable levels.

The most economical way to soften household water is with an ion exchange water softener. This unit uses sodium chloride (table salt) to recharge beads made of ion exchange resin that exchange hardness mineral ions for sodium ions. Artificial or natural zeolites can also be used.


As the hard water passes through and around the beads, the hardness mineral ions are preferentially absorbed, displacing the sodium ions. This process is called ion exchange. When the bead or sodium zeolite has a low concentration of sodium ions left, it is exhausted, and can no longer soften water.


The resin is recharged by flushing (often back-flushing) with saltwater. The high excess concentration of sodium ions alter the equilibrium between the ions in solution and the ions held on the surface of the resin, resulting in replacement of the hardness mineral ions on the resin or zeolite with sodium ions. The resulting saltwater and mineral ion solution is then rinsed away, and the resin is ready to start the process all over again. This cycle can be repeated many times.


Some softening processes in industry use the same method, but on a much larger scale. These methods create an enormous amount of salty water that is costly to treat and dispose of (see image on the left).




Temporary hardness, caused by hydrogen carbonate (or bicarbonate) ions, can be removed by boiling. For example, calcium hydrogen carbonate, often present in temporary hard water, is boiled in a kettle to remove the hardness. In the process, a scale forms on the inside of the kettle in a process known as "furring of kettles", and can also cause hard water stains. This scale is composed of calcium carbonate.

Ca(HCO3)2 → CaCO3 + CO2 + H2O

Hardness can also be reduced with a lime-soda ash treatment. This process, developed by Thomas Clark in 1841, involves the addition of slaked lime (calcium hydroxide — Ca(OH)2) to a hard water supply to convert the hydrogen carbonate hardness to carbonate, which precipitates and can be removed by filtration:

Ca(HCO3)2 + Ca(OH)2 → 2CaCO3 + 2H2O

The addition of sodium carbonate also softens permanently hard water containing calcium sulfate, as the calcium ions form calcium carbonate which precipitates out and sodium sulfate is formed which is soluble. The calcium carbonate (also known as limescale) formed sinks to the bottom. Sodium sulfate has no effect on the hardness of water.

Na2CO3 + CaSO4 → Na2SO4 + CaCO3