When we mention hard water, we’re referring to water that contains dissolved minerals like calcium, magnesium, and perhaps iron. Regardless of if you use your own on-site well, or obtain water from the municipal water supplier, your water could still be hard. Either way, it’s advantageous to eliminate the problem with some type of a salt water softener.

Water with hardness minerals can cause damage in many different ways. It can cause a scale build-up inside of water pipes that may eventually cause them to close shut. Scale build-up inside of water heaters can reduce their efficiency, causing them to use more energy. If your home has copper pipes, hard water can cause them to corrode, eating through them and causing leaks. (That can make for quite an expensive repair bill, especially if the plumbing runs under a concrete slab.) Also, hard water can cause sink fixtures to corrode and pit.

When it’s time to bathe or to do laundry, these hardness minerals can decrease the efficiency of soap or detergent. A soap scum will form, causing colored clothes to lose their brightness, and white clothes to turn a nasty yellow. (You can see where this would increase clothing costs.)

To help save your body, your plumbing, and your clothing, it’s advantageous to make the water soft by removing hardness minerals. The most efficient method is to perform an ion exchange, replacing hardness mineral ions with something else. Normally, this “something else” is sodium.

A softening unit has a bed of resin that will periodically get bathed with highly-concentrated salt brine. This “recharges” the resin with sodium ions. An ion exchange happens when water goes through this resin.

Only a few decades ago, softening devices had to be taken to a shop to be recharged. Once a week or so, or whenever the homeowner thought that the device needed it, someone from the shop would come out and replace the device with a new one. The old one would go back to the shop for recharging. Nowadays, softening units can do their own recharging, either on a chronological schedule or after a certain number of gallons of water have gone through them. All the homeowner needs to do is to keep it filled with salt, and for certain brands, to keep a tank of resin rinse solution filled.

There are many vendors who offer various types of salt water softener. A lot of newer models have cool features that were not common just a few years ago. You can use your favorite search engine to find more information.

Before you buy anything online, make sure you check Anthony Presbers’ excellent sales blog on Salt Water Softeners and read dozens of Salt Water Softener Reviews