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Hard water is full of metals like calcium and magnesium. These substances that enter your water supply make it hard. Hard water is a term for water that is full of additional metals that not only affect the taste of water, but also make the water damage your plumbing and appliances, contributes to the buildup of soap scum, and interrupts your ability to clean yourself or your home because hard water does not lather as well as soft water. Soft water is water that has been treated by a water softener in Saint Paul to remove the negative effects that hard water can have. Water softeners are pieces of machinery that can be installed in your plumbing and do something that no other machinery can: it softens your water and fills your home with more desirable water. These softeners operate in this way: calcium and magnesium ions that are in hard water will switch places with ions that are better suited for water, such as sodium. This exchange removes all problems associated with hard water. Only a small amount of sodium is added to the water by water softeners, but this tiny amount is enough to stimulate an exchange of metals. Here is how the water softener is able to exchange the metals in your water with small amounts of sodium: a tank of tiny polystyrene beads, or resin, contains an overall negative charge that causes it to chemically bond with positively-charged ions of sodium. Like the opposing ends of the magnet, the resin and sodium will bind with each other in the tank. As hard water flows into your water supply and through your water softener, the hard water will interact with the resin. Because the metals in hard water, like magnesium and calcium, have a stronger positive charge than sodium does, the resin will disconnect its bond with the sodium and instead bind with the magnesium and calcium, essentially trapping the metals in the water softener's tank. The sodium, meanwhile, will be opposed to the high positive charge of the metals in hard water because it itself has a positive charge (remember the ends of a magnet; 2 positive poles will repel each other). The sodium, then, will flow out of the tank with the softened, metal-cleansed water and out into your plumbing. The harmful metals, meanwhile, will remain in your tank, happily attached to resin rather than clinging to the walls of your plumbing, your walls and floors, or the metals in your appliances. Unfortunately, over time the sodium will be flushed out of the tank and the unit will no longer be able to soften your water supply. However, a water softener can undergo a regeneration cycle in which the resin beads will soak in a strong solution of sodium chloride, essentially saltwater. This briny solution will overwhelm the metals that have attached to the resin and repel them away. This then resets your resin beads in your water softener with sodium so that they can then continue removing metals from hard water again. The tank will then flush away the metals it has accumulated along with the briny solution it uses to regenerate. Water softeners, despite how chemically complex they are, are actually easy to install, cheap to maintain, and--best of all--affordable for most families! Or, at least, they are far cheaper than the expense of removing soap scum deposits, replacing damaged appliances and plumbing, and cleaning the mess that hard water can leave. All in all, it is a far better investment--not to mention a highly satisfying one with instantly-noticeable results--to invest in a water softener Saint Paul.
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