I am getting extremely hard water in my locality. Are there any home remedies to reduce hardness of water?
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1I removed the medical claims accompanying this post. Apart from them seeming unsubstantiated, such claims are outside the scope of this site– Robert CartainoCommented Dec 12, 2016 at 14:06
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What are you trying to do? Is this water for human consumption? Are you trying to reduce damage to your plumbing fixtures?– ErinGoBraghCommented Dec 12, 2016 at 17:18
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@ErinGoBragh I am looking for easy, home driven and cheap solution to make the water soft enough for head-wash. In current condition it is giving me extreme hair fall and premature graying. It is definitely not safe enough for human consumption. But this water is colorless, odorless, and salty to taste.– mehtakCommented Dec 12, 2016 at 18:55
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1I'm going to have to agree with Maneesh and Hobbes, you need professional testing and professionally installed water treatment equipment. If you are seeing health effects this severe, there is probably more going on than normal hard water. Your water may not be safe for any use.– ErinGoBraghCommented Dec 12, 2016 at 19:06
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4 Answers
There are no life-hack solutions for this.
To treat hard water, you need a water softener, which is a device that gets installed in your water supply and has to be filled with the right chemicals every few months.
Salty water is another problem entirely. The water softener doesn't help with this. Ordinary sea salt shouldn't be a problem for your skin and hair, but other compounds could still taste salty.
You need professional testing to find out what has contaminated your water.
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Note the edited question -- a water softener isn't the right treatment for salty water. Commented Dec 12, 2016 at 19:11
Actually, it depends upon the level of hardness which you can not identify using home techniques. The better idea is to approach water testing authorities in your locality that come under governmental jurisdiction with some of the water samples. They could direct you with exact method to solve this issue. Also, hacks can work only for a small period of time. Since this issue will arise regularly, you must resort to a permanent solution.
- Boil the water to its boiling point. Check if this water has lost its hardness. If yes then the water have soft hardness.(Just one method of many to resolve this issue, you can try this)
answered Dec 12, 2016 at 11:11
You can mix washing soda to the water and then filter it if any precipitation occurs. Though it is not an very easy technique, it works.
If the water tastes salty, it's what's called "brackish". As you note, this is not potable water; drinking brackish water may cause kidney failure and other health problems. A water softener won't resolve salty water; in fact, it'll tend to make it worse.
What you really need is a filtration system -- Reverse Osmosis or deionizing, or the combination often called RODI (reverse osmosis deionized). This will produce very pure water that's suitable for washing, drinking, and cooking. Unfortunately, it's also expensive, because both the membrane cartridge and the DI filter that follows it up have limited life, and the process wastes much of the water it takes in. Also, affordable RODI systems produce a limited number of gallons per day, usually with little or no pressure on the filtered output.
A good compromise system is a filter like those sold by Pur or Brita for drinking water. You can filter enough water for washing and drinking every day with a filter that will cost around $10 four times a year for refill cartridges. The water produced is generally tasteless and shouldn't contribute to problems caused by your current non-potable supply.
