The Importance of a Water Softener

I used to hear the phrase hard or soft water and laugh, water is water, what is the difference?

I was young, inexperienced with the concept of the difference between water. Lately, I have been extremely conscious of the amount of bottles from bottled water that fills the landfills. I come from the age when I was little; our bottled products were all in glass. The glass wasn't recycled to terms that they are as of today, the bottles became vases, rolling pins, and other inventful ideas.

Quite frankly, the water didn't taste as good as it used to either, not even the bottled water. I had begun to wonder where our water supply is exactly coming from, and since we live along the Mississippi River, I was wondering if that was not the source. I became worried that this was indeed the fact and worried about drinking the water.

There were days that the water tasted as if I had grabbed a bottle of bleach and chugged it. Our skin was dry and chapped constantly, not to mention that our clothes were becoming discolored and worn out quickly.

I wondered what caused the situation and when it came down to the water I dismissed it.

The build up of calcium soon clogged the fish tanks and once a week was spent unclogging the filters. The shower was coated in soap scum and I had become picky about what soap was even used. I had quit using Ivory soap as it seemed to be the worst with the soap residue. Yet, Ivory you say is one of the cleanest soaps, but as I soon learned that is only with clean water.

Clean water?

A water specialist came to the house, at least that is what my gullible thoughts were and since we'd recently had a boil order, I assumed they were testing house to house to find a new section of town that needed to either boil or not have to boil any longer.

The testing results were off of the records. I learned that there was 391 things in the water I drank, watered my plants, my fish swam around in, my kids drank, and everything else I use water for. Water in my thoughts made up H2O, which I thought is all that should be in my water and throw in some chlorine and fluoride, the chlorine to kill any of the germs and the fluoride to help our teeth.