Water naturally evaporates from oceans, lakes, and rivers to form clouds. Pure water then falls to the earth as rain, snow, and sleet cleaning the air, and picking up contaminants on the way down. This water, which falls back to the earth, becomes more aggressive. As moisture hits the earth and filters through layers of rock and dirt, it picks up minerals like calcium and magnesium which concentrate the hardness of the water.

Hardness can cause a variety of aesthetic challenges for homeowners. Hard water creates a mineral buildup on water-using appliances such as water heaters, dishwashers, and laundry machines. This mineral scale decreases efficiency and causes premature ware on the appliances. In addition, because hard water contains contaminants that interfere with cleaning, homeowners find themselves using more soap and chemicals to clean. To avoid these problems, homeowners often invest in a water softening unit to remove the hardness from the water.

Basically water hardness is measured by the amount of hardness minerals (generally calcium and magnesium) in your water. These amounts are measured in grains per gallon (GPG). The following table illustrates the hardness magnitude of water:

Often people say, “I’ve heard of places that are 30 grains hard, or even 60 grains hard. This scale cannot possibly be all encompassing!” The United States has some areas that exceed 100 gpg in hardness, but this scale is based on appliance tolerance to hard water. Take your dishwasher for example: The softer the water, the longer it will last. Under moderately hard water, your dishwasher will last several years–even though it’s not entirely soft water. On the other hand, if you’re on extremely hard water, your dishwasher may only last a few years before hard water completely incapacitates the appliance. Certainly the dishwasher will run on 50 gpg hardness, but its lifespan will be dramatically shortened.

While you don’t necessarily have to use salt, every water softener uses a cleaning agent of some kind–most use salt.

A water softener can only “absorb” so many hardness ions; and after it has reached hardness saturation, it must regenerate (trade all the hard ions for soft ones to be able to soften more water). When the softener regenerates, it must use a solution of some kind to rinse away the hardness ions. Most commonly the solution is sodium saturated water (salt water). Alternatively a potassium solution can also be used to regenerate the resin.

Perhaps you’ve heard of magnetic water treatment systems or catalytic converters. Marketers of these water treatment devices are very careful regarding what they say. Truly magnetic systems can change the chemical balance of the water and suspend hardness ions in the water.

However, most neglect to mention is that even though the hardness ions have been suspended, they’re not removed from the water. If the hardness ions are not kept in the heavy magnetic field, the hardness ions resume their “hard” effect on the water. Magnetic water treatment units were developed by the U.S. Army as a cost effective way to eliminate the effects of hard water while the water travels through boilers (or other in-line water equipment)–and magnetic water treatment systems do exactly that: while the water’s in the boiler it’s soft, when it comes out again, it’s already rebalancing its chemical composition and becoming hard again.

To maintain the effect of magnetic water treatment system, you would have to install strong magnetic polarity devices every few feet on your household pipes. Otherwise, the water passes through, becomes soft then “hardens” again in your pipes.

If you’re not used to soft water, it’s not uncommon to leap into a shower and lather up and suddenly feel slimy, silky, or very slick. That slimy feeling comes from the glycerin in soap itself. Soft water is exponentially more effective than hard water for dissolving substances. When you’re used to using a certain amount of soap in a hard water shower, when you use the same amount of soap in soft water, you’ll be swimming in suds. You’re using the same amount of soap, but now that soap is up to 50-75 percent more effective.

Soft water is safe to drink for virtually everyone.

If you participate in a very strict sodium-restricting diet, salt-softened water may not be right for you. To give you an idea how the additional salt affects your sodium intake, consider this: an average soft-water consumer takes in about five grams of sodium through normal eating and drinking. Of those five grams of sodium, one-third of one gram (0.336 g) is from softened water the equivalent weight of half a watermelon seed. A black olive contains 238 times the amount of sodium you’ll consume in an entire day from soft water! That’s how little sodium is added to your diet through soft water.

Some people mistakenly believe that soft water is salt water. Basically when you soften water it runs through resin beads to remove hardness. When the resin beads can’t remove any more hardness, you have to regenerate the resin with a salt solution. Only when the resin is regenerated does water flow through the softener as product water–flowing over beads that have been rinsed with a salt solution. Sodium is contributed to the soft water in trace amounts, but is generally not a cause for concern in most consumers’ diets.

Soft water cleans much more effectively than hard water. To accomplish the same results, soft water requires 50-75 percent less soap or detergent than hard water. This alone creates a great cost savings over time. When you first start using soft water take special care to quarter the amount of soap you typically use. For a lightly soiled load of laundry in a laundry machine, a heaped teaspoon of powdered detergent should be sufficient. You don’t need to fill your dishwasher detergent bin to heaping–in fact only fill it a quarter of what you used to. While the 1/4 rule is generally sound, experience is the best teacher in this area.

First soft water is not a cure-all for dry skin and eczema. That said, dry or itchy skin is often caused by foreign substances on the skin, substances that can be greatly reduced if not eliminated with soft water. Many sufferers of dry skin or eczema report improvement after using soft water. Because so many factors influence the skin, it’s impossible to quantify the effects of soft water on the skin.

However, many benefits are unchallenged: soft water requires less soap or detergent and rinses cleaner than hard water, soap curds and other chemicals are rinsed away leaving pores naturally open–allowing the skin to “breathe.” With clearer skin, and less chemicals to irritate the skin, dry skin sufferers and eczema patients generally experience softer, healthier skin with continued use of soft water.

Under normal conditions, resin (the tiny beads that facilitate the ion-exchange process) should last approximately 20 to 25 years. Resin life can be reduced, however, under harsh water conditions like severe hardness, the presence of excessive iron in the water, or abnormal pH extremes.

Your water softening system should be disinfected after installation. The softener should also be disinfected periodically throughout the life of the softener, or as indicated by a plumbing professional according to local water conditions.

The salt tank should be cleaned at least biennially, depending on the grade of salt you’re using (Higher grades of salt require less cleaning as it is purer). Cleaning the salt tank every two years ensures your softener will avoid problems associated with salt “mushing” or “gumming.” Simply remove the salt and clean out the salt tank and the float assembly with water.

Some salt may become encrusted on the bottom of the tank–this is normal salt crystallization, but it should be removed to ensure proper regeneration. Do not use chemicals in the tank unless the chemicals are approved water softener treatment chemicals–any resident chemicals potentially enter the water supply.

Yes you can. While many plumbing fixtures become part of the home, many people choose to take their water softening system with them when they move. You’ll have to place the system in bypass (which allows hard water to flow through the valve independent of the softener), then disconnect the system.

You are also the original purchaser so your warranty will still be in force. Alternatively, some people elect to leave the softening system in the home and sell it with the home and purchase a new one when they arrive at their new home.

A properly sized water softener uses an efficient amount of water for each regeneration, based on household water pressure (PSI). Keep in mind that a typical five-minute shower uses between 25 and 50 gallons of water according to the EPA. Oceanus systems have the following regeneration water usage:

Occasionally a customer will undersize a system to take advantage of lower regeneration water usage, without taking into account the time between regenerations. This is actually less efficient. For example, if a 70 grain system is installed in the place of a 90 grain system, each regeneration uses 15 gallons less water. However, regeneration occurs nearly twice as often.

For this example, in a four-week period the 70 grain system regenerated nine times, using a total of 405 gallons of water. The 90 grain system regenerated four times for a total of 240 gallons. Clearly a properly sized unit is more efficient (almost 2:1 in this example) in the long run based on gallons of water used.

The inverse is not a good idea either. Over sizing a system to take advantage of the most efficient water usage allows too much time to pass between regeneration cycles. This allows naturally occurring bacteria to grow in the system and creates a sanitization problem inside the water softener.