Do you know that feeling when you wash your hair with soft water and it feels so very silky. Or when you lather soap on your loofa or in your hands and it becomes really soapy and sudsy. The water you are using has been treated by a water softener system. This water is called ‘soft water’. Water that has not been treated by a water softener system is called ‘hard water’. This is water that has high levels of calcium, magnesium and other materials. These minerals are dissolved by ground water from the surrounding rocks and soil.

To remove these materials, the water is passed through a brine tank with salt or resin. From there it is passes through a fiberglass, stainless steel or steel tank. A chemical reaction takes place where the hardness in the water is replaced with the salt or resin. Calcium and magnesium in the water are removed.

For residential use a small single tank can be used to soften the water for a whole household. For larger water applications, such as Reverse Osmosis Systems or desalination plants, water softening is used to remove the hardness so that when the water is passed through the semi-permeable membranes, they don’t foul or build up with calcium and other materials that could damage the membrane and stop it from working. For this reason alone, water softening is a very important step in water treatment processes.

Pure Aqua, Inc. manufactures and sells water softener systems. They are one of the leading experts in water treatment systems and desalination units.