Understanding How Water Softeners Work | Why Do You Need One?

If you notice your pipes have buildups, or maybe your skin feels dry after taking a bath, there is a huge possibility that you have hard water. Hard water is not only detrimental to your appliances, but it can also cause health problems in the long run. Homes with hard water need to get a water softener. If you have heard of this yet, you are not sure how it works, then you have come to the right place.

Water Softener – What Is It For?

A water softener is a filtration system that helps remove unwanted minerals from your water. It treats the water to “soften” it. The minerals that it removes are the ones that create the hardness in water. Hard water can destroy your appliances. The stains that it creates in your kitchen and bathroom are unsightly.

Most people these days rely on hard water for cooking, bathing, and cleaning. Water softeners are extremely helpful in making sure that the water you use is safe and free from the minerals that can shorten the lives of your appliances. Investing in a water softener will not only help you save time and money, but it will also protect your home and your health.

The Ion Exchange Process

Before you buy a water softener Cincinnati, you must understand how it works.

The process of cleansing or treating the water is called the Ion Exchange. What it does is eliminates the hard minerals in water – calcium and magnesium. The system has a mineral tank where water enters. It will then flow through the resin beads. They are polystyrene plastic with the sodium ion.

Now, remember that the resin beads are anions, and they have a negative charge while the magnesium and calcium are cations and have a positive charge. The negative and positive charges attract. When the water passes through the beads, the minerals are attracted to them and remove them from the water supply. Once the mineral ion is removed, the sodium ion is then released. So the water that passes through these resin beads is free from its hardness.

Water Softener Regeneration Cycles

Now you might wonder what will happen if the resin beads become full of the minerals it filtered? When this happens, the regeneration cycle happens. The highly-concentrated brine mixture washes over the hardness minerals and then drain them out of the filtration system. So the beds are recharged and would be useful again in filtering the water.

The regeneration process of water softeners can be co-current and counter-current. The co-current regeneration will use more of the brine solution to complete the process. In contrast, the counter-current regeneration uses 65% less water and 75% less salt compared to the co-current regeneration. The counter-current regeneration also distributes the sodium ions equally. In this cycle, the highly-charged beads are at the bottom of the mineral tank.

Do you need a water softener? If your water source is a deep well or through your community supplier, then you should. Most suppliers these days use hard water, and you do not want its unwanted minerals inside your home. So have it filtered using a water softener.