A water softener has become a necessity in every household. This device converts the hard water in your house into soft water. Hard water is the one which has dissolved calcium and magnesium. You can see that the water in your bathroom leaves a film on everything it touches. That film is basically the mineral deposits of hard water. In order to extract all the minerals from the water, a water softener for apartment building or for your home is necessary. This hard water can cause skin irritation and it also dries up your hair. Drinking it can be dangerous for health as well. That is why, if you live in an apartment, arrange for a best commercial water softener to ensure the provision of soft water.
How Does It Actually Work?
A water softener is not a complex machine. It works on the following principles:
- A simple water softener for apartment building will extract all the calcium and magnesium from the hard water and replace it with sodium ions. It is because the calcium and magnesium ions present in hard water interfere with the soaps and detergents. They do not make lather with hard water. But on the other hand, sodium ions do not interfere with these soaps.
- The softener is installed near the place of water entering your household. In a typical softener, there is a plastic resin which is porous. This resin attracts all the calcium and magnesium ions passing through it and then the water flows into your home. The resin consists of tiny beads which attract all the positive ions (calcium and magnesium). In this way, the calcium and magnesium ions are removed from the water and thrown out into a dump by the water softener. And then sodium ions are thrown in.
- You have to wash the resin after every few days with Sodium Chloride solution. It is because the resin is covered in calcium and magnesium ions. This process is called regeneration.
- In some water softeners, there is a separate brine tank which uses brine solution to dispose of the calcium and magnesium ions. The brine solution is made from sodium chloride. There are some water softeners which have an automatic regenerating system. And you do not have to make the brine solution, because the machine will do it on its own.
- There are some people who monitor their sodium intake. They cannot drink a salty water which is a result of water softening. But there is a solution to this as well. There are resins which throw potassium into the water instead of sodium. But this type of softening is more expensive because of using potassium chloride instead of ordinary table salt; sodium chloride.
- The salt which is released into a gallon of water that has been softened is almost equal to the number of salts found in 2 slices of white bread. That is why some people do not take much of salts, and they will have to use the resins which use potassium ions.
