What are Water Softeners

Water Softeners – How do you soften drinking water, my water doesn’t feel hard? The next question is how does a water softener work?

Hard water and Soft water

The filtration job of a water softener as part of your whole house water treatment system is to turn hard water into soft water. To understand exactly how this is accomplished we need to understand a little about “Hard water and Soft water”, I’m sure you have heard the phrases but what exactly do they mean?

If your home tap water, either from a municipal water source or well water, contains a lot of dissolved calcium and magnesium ions it is referred to as hard water. The high concentration of minerals (measured as grains of hardness) causes two problems:

(1) Hard water can cause “scale” to form on the inside of your water supply pipes for your whole house eventually reducing the supply pipe diameter of the pipes restricting water flow even to the point of completely clogging the pipes, precipitating on faucet and shower filters thus clogging water flow,
and especially menacing, building up in the interior of your hot water heater and drain line resulting in reduced efficiency since the scale does not conduct heat.

(2) Hard water reacts with detergents/soap to form a scum that sticks to everything it contacts. Have you ever taken a bath or shower and the soap just did not lather well? That’s because the hard water prevents the soap from lathering and actually cuts down on the cleaning effectiveness of the soap and detergent in the bath and laundry.

Soft water – is the result of an efficient water softening system where the calcium and magnesium ions are removed from the water supply. If your water is “hard” you currently have three common water treatment systems that soften the water: distillation systems, reverse osmosis systems (RO) or a water softener.

Comparing the three softening techniques, the water softening system is the less expensive.

How Does a Water Softener System Work?

The actual concept of the water softener is a simple one where the calcium and magnesium ions that are in the water supply are replaced by sodium ions from salt (NaCl).

This ion replacement is accomplished by the house supply water being feed into a tank with a bed of plastic beads. The beads, or softener resin, are covered with Na (sodium) ions and as the calcium and magnesium ions pass through the bead bed, the calcium and magnesium ions are swapped at the bead surface, trapping the Ca and Mg ions and releasing the Na ions into the water.

Eventually all the Na ions on the beads are replaced by the calcium and magnesium stopping the water softening effect. When is occurs, you must regenerate the softener resin by mixing a strong solution of salt brine, usually in a brine tank, and letting the brine solution soak in the bead bed.

In actuality what is happening during the resin regeneration is the reverse of the softening process. Now the sodium is replacing the Ca and Mg ions on the surface of the beads or zeolite, recharging the ability of the resin bed to again attract the calcium and magnesium ions. The resin bed is then flushed per manufacturer recommendations to restore the water softener to an operational state again providing softened water. The discharge or rinse water is a mixture of brine and high concentrations of calcium and magnesium
ions that gets flushed into the sewer/septic system.