What Kind Of Water Do You People Have Out There?

[launderess]

Anyway.

Know we in New York are blessed with wonderfully soft water, but still am gobsmacked at the state of things that have arrived.

Steam boiler iron packed it in a month ago, so nabbed another professional one from up north (Canada). It arrived, was unpacked, and as per directions descaled (water and vinegar mix allowed to sit overnight), then emptied.

First draining produced water that was chalky white with all sorts of grit, sand, and what looked like small bits of rock. *Three* descaling solutions later it took *four* rinsing out with clean water (on top of the several descaling fluids) before water was finally clear, and free of grit, chalk and *rocks*.

Have never seen such a thing. Mind you other appliances or whatever that have arrived (such as eBay purchases) have been coated in chalk white residue that would chip teeth. Got a Nicro vacuum coffee pot off fleaPay that took a week of soaking and scrubbing with white vinegar to get the lower pot scale free.

 

[laundrytime]

We have lousy water

I'm glad we don't have a shortage of water, but it is full of minerals and prematurely messes up the plumbing fixtures and pipes. The water comes out of the Red River (Tx, La, Ark, Ok) which has a high salt content for being fresh water. I don't know if a water softener would correct that or not.

 

[tomturbomatic]

We are fortunate on this side of our metro area in that our water is taken out of the Patuxent River which is soft. Montgomery County takes their water from the Potomac which is quite full of minerals from the mountains and mines in them. I have used both and softer is better.

 

[liamy1]

Extremely...

Soft (absolutely nothing happens on those test strips for hardness).

I couldn’t cope with even moderately hard water. Father in law has very hard water (Ireland) and it’s a nightmare, constant descaling, Brita filters etc etc

Only way I could see hard water being of benefit to me is that it would call for higher detergent doses, so would get through my stash quicker lol

 

[appnut]

I have very hard water that comes from the Leon River in the Brazos River basic. 

 

[superocd]

I live several miles south of Seattle and our water is as soft as it can get. I never have to de-scale the coffeemaker and the acrylic (or fiberglass?) shower enclosure never has deposits on it (though I do use auto wax after cleaning it). None of our faucets have any evidence of scale either. The dishwasher and washer sparkle and we don't even bother using Jet-Dry since there's very little spotting, if any.

I suppose if you are on a well your situation might be different. We are in a semi-rural area. Just a few miles down the road, the homes are no longer on municipal water but a well. I'm not sure if they require a softener system or not.

The only issue I have with the water is the fact that the chlorine levels might be a little high. Our kitchen sink has a reverse osmosis filtration system.

I did buy a handheld steamer at Goodwill once and the reservoir was really scaled up, bad enough that there was chalky, rock-like substance inside and it rattled if you shook it. I had to run vinegar through it several times.

 

[turquoisedude]

Both houses are 'off the grid' as far as water supply goes. The well in Ogden is hard with a good iron content. No need to eat spinach at our house...LOL

In St-Lib, the well water is not just hard, it's rich in sulfur. Running a tap would fill the room with the odor of rotten eggs; we got a water-treatment system PDQ needless to say.  We also had a water softener installed in Ogden just months after moving in.  I would have to say the water there is better than in St-Lib.

 

[bendix5]

Vinegar is our best friend here in Oregon. We are on community wells and it pushes up very hard water. We descale every month or so, coffee pot, kettle and pots and pans that water boils in like a egg poacher. Looking in the washer we seldom see suds. We do use a britta. No automatic ice maker as it plugs up. We fill ice trays with britta water. My wife uses distilled water in her irons because she is a quilter and doesn't want chalky steam which can stain. Our towels are stiff all of the time. I put vinegar in the wash to help with that. We don't mind. It is just part of life and we maintain. The plus side is we live in Southern Oregon in a nice area surrounded with pines and madrone trees.

 

[ea56]

Here in Sonoma Co. we have very hard water. Our city uses community wells too, and there is a lot of calcium in the water. Just like Dan in the post above we us a Brita filter for our water, a faucet mount, which is very convenient.

Every time we use the stainless steel kitchen sink, we wipe off all the splashed water around the faucet and top ot the sink, otherwise it would always have hard water spots, same with the bathroom faucets. After we shower, we use a towel to wipe down all the tile, the faucet, shower caddy and overflow cover, to again prevent water spots. And just like Dan, we seldom see suds in the washer, and I always use the maximum amount of detergent in order to get things clean.

I descale the coffeemaker at least once a month and always use filtered water when I make coffee, it really does make a positive difference in the taste of the coffee.

Eddie

 

[fan-of-fans]

We have soft water, but the iron content is the issue with well water. Our house had a Sears Iron Removal filter that was close to 40 years old and didn't seem to do anything so we removed it. Looks like the only way to get around it is to get central water piped in. This type of iron isn't the kind that permanently stains but it leaves a residue over time on shower walls, etc if you don't clean well and often.

 

[tomturbomatic]

The other bad thing about iron-rich water is that you cannot use liquid chlorine bleach. I believe I heard that you get a bad reaction if you used LCB in sulfur-rich water, too.

 

[mrboilwash]

We have hard water in Munich which can be a nightmare sometimes.
But water quality is so much more than hardness alone.
Pollution levels are very low, it is even recommended for the preparation of baby food, has a pleasant taste, isn`t treated or chlorinated at all unless in the rare occasion of a severe flood and it`s "ice cold" year around.
Besides calcium and magnesium are supposed to be good for ones health and a little coating in the pipes doesn`t hurt either.

Taking a shower with traditional bar soap in New York City is truly amazing, but when I ran out of bottled water I found drinking the chlorine a little off putting.
Guess we can`t have it all.

 

[turquoisedude]

Bleach & sulfur-rich water

Oh yeah... I learned that the hard way when we first moved to St-Lib, Tom!  I am still cautious because I believe our hot water tank still has some residue in it.  Hot water and Oxy-Clean are what I use for the whites now.

 

[DADoES]

 
From a well at the front corner of my property.  Upper-moderately hard.  No offensive odors, iron, sulfur.

 

[launderess]

Guess am spoiled for choice then....

Just cannot imagine having to deal with such hard water on a regular basis.

Yes, showering/bathing here in NYC is joy; tons of lather!..... Yay!

Back when soap was queen of laundry day it was a boon to anyone that water here was soft. Lessened soap requirements, and or added extras like soda, phosphates, etc...

 

[abcomatic]

Hard water here but with the help of the water softener, it;s good.

 

[robbinsandmyers]

Soft water here sourced locally from Lake Whitney ( cotton gin fame ) but its pretty chlorinated. It actually gets good ratings each year.

 

[jamiel]

We've got perfectly fine relatively soft water here from the Detroit system---Flint (45 miles north) got scre@@ed by the move away from the Detroit system onto a different system (Karengondi) with different base chemistry than the Detroit water. It could have been perfectly safe if they had treated it appropriately (to preserve the pipe coating), but they chintzed out, didn't treat the water appropriately so the protective pipe coating was breached and the lead leached. Thanks Governor Snyder. A funny story, though. I went over to our facility in England about 3 years ago. They'd recently moved into a new facility about 2-3 months before, so didn't have water treatment in place. They warned us to drink either bottled water or to traipse to the canteen to get filtered. The kettle they used was so filthy and encrusted (remember it was only 2 months old) I could hardly believe it---I'd been using a kettle at work for literally YEARS with no buildup of scale/minerals. I guess I'd never seen really hard water!

 

[lakewebsterkid]

Water

Our water is moderately hard. It has a bit of iron and sulfur in it, but not too much. We actually just received a letter in the mail saying that our water has high levels of a chemical compound. I threw the paper away and now can't find any info in regards to it. It would be very nice to have a water softener hooked up just before our water heater.

 

[wayupnorth]

Hard water with high iron content from my well. Have to use a water softener to make it usable, but you might as well drink ocean water from the salt used to soften, at 8 bucks a bag. So I buy drinking water. But no water and sewer bill.

 

[rolls_rapide]

My water is supposed to be classed as soft, but I'm not so sure. The kettle does seem to fur up over time, as do the spouts of the taps. And the iron seems to spit out sandy particulates.

Do the water companies make any attempt to add hardness to water? Soft water isn't supposed to be very good for you to drink (high sodium levels), whereas hard water is better.

 

[launderess]

IIRC naturally soft water isn't an issue regarding sodiu

But mechanical or whatever other process is due to nature of how things are done.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-...t-answers/water-softeners-sodium/faq-20058469

https://www.culliganmidmissouri.com...reated-water/is-softened-water-safe-to-drink/

Of course naturally soft water contains sodium and other minerals, just not usually to extent of unnatural versions.

 

[gusherb]

Lake Michigan gives us some of the cleanest tap water to be had. It’s hardness is around 8 gpg which is considered the bottom end of “hard”, but it takes forever for deposits to form on shower heads, around faucets etc. There’s some towns that still use well water and the quality of that is atrocious, around 25 gpg hardness and some places it smells like sulfur. There was a huge push in the 80s-90s to pipe in Lake Michigan water in suburban municipalities because of that.

 

[ken]

Well Laundress

I see you're very happy with "our" water from up here. I live very close to two of the reservoirs that are part of the NYC water supply system.

As to our water for our homes here we all have private wells. The water is great. I've never tested ours but hardness is not an issue at all.

 

[johnb300m]

I'm just shy of the Lake Michigan watershed, so I'm on municipal well.
We have, like Gus said, 25 freakin' grains per gallon.
I soften my water and it's much much better.
Luckily no iron or sulfur. Our city wells are very clean, just very crunchy.

The soft water is great. I use a fraction of detergents and fabric softener.
When using liquid or powder cascade, the soap cup only has to be filled half way.
Still have to use jet dry, ironically. Otherwise I get salt spots!
However, salt spots wipe off very easily.
And I've had periodic issues with glass etching.

I drink the softened tap water, and I'm not worried about the trace salt amounts.
If I had salt health issues though, I would certainly have to get drinking water delivered in.

 

[whirlykenmore78]

It's a mixed bag in the Twin Cities:

If you live in Minneapolis or one of the suburbs supplied by Minneapolis Water works the water is from the Mississippi river and is softened before it gets to you. Minneapolis water tends to be of very good quality and softeners/filters are usually not needed. The water hardness is 4-4.5 grains per gallon

St. Paul water is mostly from the Mississippi with some well water introduced. It is also softened. Living in the range of ST Paul water additional treatment is usually not needed as the water is of good quality. Hardness is comparable to Minneapolis

Water in the suburbs is hit or miss but unless purchased from MPLS or STP is not from the river but from deep wells (700-1200 feet) drilled into the Jordan or Mt. Simon/Hinckley aquafers. While a few cities do soften their water (Eden Prairie is around 4 grains as is Bloomington which also uses about 23% Minneapolis water and Richfield and White Bear are around 6) most water is between 18 and 30 grains so very hard.
Some suburban cities have basic treatment plants(filtration only no lime softening) while others treat raw well water at the source with Chlorine and fluoride and it is sent into the distribution system.

This is why, living in a hard water area, I went with an Ecowater EWS 3500 system. No hard water buildup, no iron build up, less than 1 grain hardness. Made in MN to last 20 plus years.

WK78

 

[tolivac]

Eastern Pines Water out here--comes from wells.In my neighborhood-a few years ago the aging ASBESTOS water pipes were replaced with new PVC and PE ones.Got to watch the whole thing-was interesting-2 horizontal directional drills-several backhoes,A Mighty Mole drill used to bore under driveways without digging them up and a pneumatic mole that goes under streets and yards to run the pipes.Water is fine for me.The new system had to be sterilized with bleach solutions before it could be used and had to pass state and county inspections before put into service.A little of the work had to be redone.Was an interesting project the neighbors also enjoyed.We got free lessons on pipefitting!Also they used a neat pipe fusing machine!Was fun to watch it work!

 

[askolover]

Our water comes from the Duck River and is moderately hard.  When I bought my house the shower head was so caked it would barely spray!  All the faucets had the crust on them.  I eventually replaced every faucet and now have a water softener.  No more crusties on the faucets and barely any detergent needed for washing clothes or dishes (can't even use packs in the dishwasher due to foaming).  I used to have to use an acid based cleaner for the shower doors...not anymore.  I used to work with a urologist here who says people in our location should never take a calcium supplement because our water is full of it!

 

[woollyaxolotl]

Ours runs off of peat moorland and is beautifully soft. Never descaled anything and there’s no end of lather. Family members in East Anglia are at the other end of the scale (pun intended), chalk for days. I do rinse faster in the shower there though!

 

[rolls_rapide]

I was ironing earlier today, and I noticed that the iron spat out a few grains of dark sand. I tried crushing them, and they seemed to be composed of brown powder. I'm thinking it must be iron, probably from the elderly mains supply pipes.