How do water softeners work salt

The harder the water, the more sodium is required to remove the calcium and magnesium. However, even with extremely hard water, the total sodium is minimal. The benefits of soft water on your skin, home, clothes and appliances, however, are abundant. Although the amount of sodium consumed in soft water is minimal and poses no serious health risks, some people would prefer not to drink it. In those cases, an ideal addition to your home is a reverse osmosis RO system.

These drinking water systems remove sodium, chlorine from city water, and a host of other unwanted contaminants, providing great-tasting water. Fritz explains there is a big difference between the two and that salt-free or tankless water softeners are an ineffective method to treat hard water.

Water softeners actually remove problem minerals whereas salt-free water softeners simply condition them. The same holds true for dishwashers and washing machines. When they run on hard water, these appliances become less and less effective until eventually they break down. While there are chemical treatments that do this, the most popular answer is a water softener. The typical water softener is a mechanical appliance that's plumbed into your home's water supply system.

All water softeners use the same operating principle: They trade the minerals for something else, in most cases sodium. The process is called ion exchange. The heart of a water softener is a mineral tank. It's filled with small polystyrene beads, also known as resin or zeolite. The beads carry a negative charge. Calcium and magnesium in water both carry positive charges.

This means that these minerals will cling to the beads as the hard water passes through the mineral tank. Sodium ions also have positive charges, albeit not as strong as the charge on the calcium and magnesium.

When a very strong brine solution is flushed through a tank that has beads already saturated with calcium and magnesium, the sheer volume of the sodium ions is enough to drive the calcium and magnesium ions off the beads. Water softeners have a separate brine tank that uses common salt to create this brine solution. In normal operation, hard water moves into the mineral tank and the calcium and magnesium ions move to the beads, replacing sodium ions.

The sodium ions go into the water. Once the beads are saturated with calcium and magnesium, the unit enters a 3-phase regenerating cycle. First, the backwash phase reverses water flow to flush dirt out of the tank. In the recharge phase, the concentrated sodium-rich salt solution is carried from the brine tank through the mineral tank. Water becomes hard through a natural process. When water falls as rain it contains little mineral content, but as it moves through soil and stone it picks up mineral ions.

This is because water is an excellent solvent. When water passes through stone or soil rich in minerals it dissolves some of the ionic bonds of the minerals it comes in contact with, picking up mineral ions along the way.

For more insights on how to remove salt from water and water softener alternatives , visit our page. Any mineral can contribute to water hardness, but some minerals are much more common than others.

Calcium and magnesium are the two most common minerals found in hard water in the form of bicarbonates, sulfides, and sulfates. Metals can also cause your water to become harder. One of the most common metals found in hard water is iron, which can cause reddish-brown stains on surfaces and bathroom fixtures.

Other metals like lead and aluminum may also be found in hard water. The exact mineral content of your water will depend upon which types of soil and stone your tap water passed through. For example, if your water is sourced from an area with soil rich in limestone, your water will most likely contain a high content of calcium carbonate.

This is important because many of the impacts of hard water will be worse or more noticeable if your water is very hard. The actual mineral content of your water is determined through a water test. The most common type of water hardness test will measure the content of calcium carbonate, communicated as the number of grains-per-gallon GPG of calcium carbonate in your water.

This measurement is then compared to the water hardness scale, which offers different thresholds for water depending on its mineral content. This scale provides a useful way to describe how hard or soft your water is. There are two broad categories of systems that are used to soften water: ion-exchange systems and salt-free systems. Water enters the top of the water-softener tank and percolates down through the resin beads.

The resin has a negative charge, which attracts the positively charged minerals in the water a process known as ion exchange. The mineral deposits cling to the resin and the now-softened water exits the softener tank and flows throughout the house.

At that point, the softener tank must be regenerated, or, flushed clean. An on-board computer calculates the amount of water that has flowed through the softener.

When it reaches the preprogrammed setting, regeneration automatically begins. For a three-bedroom house and family of four, regeneration usually occurs every 12, gallons. During regeneration, salty water from the brine tank flows up the fill tube and into the softener tank. A rinse cycle commences and the salty water washes the mineral deposits off the resin beads. The regenerated water—and all those destructive mineral deposits—are flushed out the discharge hose.

The system then automatically reverts back to softening the incoming water. The regeneration process slowly dissolves the salt or potassium chloride pellets in the brine tank. Again, the resin beads are permanently sealed in the softener tank and never need replacing.