When you own a home, you want the best for it in all aspects. Your new counters might be gorgeous, but are they hiding old plumbing that doesn’t work as well as it should? Water softeners are one of the best ways to improve your quality of home life. While they’ve been around for quite some time, water softeners began to gain traction in the home during the 1950s. Since then, they’ve leaped forward: becoming more efficient, smaller in size, and easier to install. What makes water softeners so special? Here are the top five things you need to know.
1. It Saves Your Existing Appliances
Water softeners have many benefits, but not the least of which is how it protects your existing appliances. Your dishwasher, sink, and bathtub are all expensive, and you shouldn’t have to replace them before their time is up. A water softener removes calcium deposits in your water (up to 95% of them!), which helps reduce corrosion, wear, and build up in your pipes and appliances.
2. You Spend Less In The Long Run
The cost to set up a water softener in your home isn’t staggering, to begin with, but it will save plenty of money in the long run. It might sound silly, but think of how much soap you use daily. Do you do laundry, run the dishwasher, shower, and wash your hands? Most likely. A water softener reduces the mineral deposits in your water, which react poorly with soaps and cause most of them to be washed away without washing anything else. When you have a water softener, your soaps and detergents work better and allow you to use left of them.
3. They Make Your Skin Healthier
Much like how hard water leaves a disgusting film on your shower doors, it also leaves a disgusting film on you. If you find yourself constantly feeling itchy, it might be that your water is hard. Water softeners remove all of the various non-essential minerals in the water, which means less build up on your skin and hair during your shower.
4. Your Water Heater Runs More Efficiently
With hard water, your water heater needs to work harder to heat it. Installing a water softener means that your water heater doesn’t need to heat the water to a higher temperature, which saves electricity and ultimately helps extend the lifetime of your appliance.
5. Water Will Taste Better
A water softener works by removing ‘impure’ particles and neutralizing them with sodium. A common myth is that this introduces salt into your water supply, but in reality, it cancels out with all of the various minerals it’s removing from the hard water. This cancellation results in cleaner, more pure water with a better odor and taste.
