Trust me, you don't want hard water, especially very hard water. I would love to have soft water flowing from the taps rather than the sand and pebbles that come out of ours. I soften our water and did have to get used to using far less detergent and cleaners than before. I do have hard-city water coming from the tap to the washer in the garage and did a test of rinsing a load of rag towels in both hard and soft water. The results are amazing. I find that using STPP is mostly unnecessary with softened water.