The effects of hard water can be very far-reaching. While it is safe to drink and bathe in, it can taste much less pleasant than soft water, builds up limescale in kettles, can leave a filmy feel on your skin after showering and can leave your hair dry after washing.
Quite apart from all that, there is the impact it can have on your clothes as they don’t get as clean and don’t feel as good to wear.
If you have recently moved to this part of the world you may have started to notice the effects, but if you are more local and are used to it, there is no reason you should go on accepting this as just ‘normal’ for hard water parts of the country.
US publication Better Homes and Gardens highlights the effects of this as including “crunchy-feeling fabrics, stains or odours that won’t lift out, and faded colours after washing”. This, it notes, is very common in American homes, where 85 per cent of households have hard water, according to the US Geological Survey.
If it is the norm over there, those used to softer water in parts of Britain like the north, Scotland, or the far south-west will see the difference.
Better Homes and Gardens suggests solutions like using warmer water, more and higher-quality detergent, but also the installation of a household water softener.
The smart conclusion to draw, of course, is that installing water softeners for the whole home will bring a multitude of benefits. It will mean your clothes last longer, feel better to wear and keep their colour longer, but you can enjoy all the other benefits of softer water alongside it.
Investing in a water filter will save you money in the longer run, because it means you won’t have to buy so much detergent, don’t get a higher energy bill because you have used hotter water to wash your clothes and, above all, won’t need to replace damaged clothes anything like as often.
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