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Scale
Deposits
Scale deposits are a typical indicator of hard water
Scale deposits from hardness
buildup affects fixtures and appliances found throughout the entire home or
business - for this reason, hardness is typically addressed with treatment of water for the whole house or building rather
than just at a specific faucet
The Water Quality Association
(WQA)
Hard water (or water hardness) is a common quality of water
which contains dissolved compounds of calcium and magnesium and, sometimes,
other divalent and trivalent metallic elements.
The term hardness was originally applied to waters that were
hard to wash in, referring to the soap wasting properties of hard water.
Hardness prevents soap from lathering by causing the development
of an insoluble curdy precipitate in the water; hardness typically causes the
buildup of hardness scale (such as seen in cooking pans).
Dissolved calcium and magnesium salts are primarily responsible
for most scaling in pipes and water heaters and cause numerous problems in
laundry, kitchen, and bath.
Hardness is usually expressed in grains per gallon (or ppm) as
calcium carbonate equivalent.
What is Soft Water?
Soft water is defined by American National Standards NSF/ANSI 44
and NSF/ANSI 330 as water containing <1 grain of hardness per gallon (or
<17.1 mg/L hardness).
Symptoms of Hard Water include:
·
Stiff, dingy laundry
·
Mineral deposits on dishes and glassware
·
High soap usage & need for fabric softeners
·
Extra work to remove soap curd on bathtubs & shower
stalls
·
High energy costs, possibly due to scale build-up in pipes and
on appliances
·
Scale build up in sinks, tubs, faucets & appliances
Water treatment can improve
hardness issues.
Scale deposits from hardness buildup affects fixtures and
appliances found throughout the entire home or business.
For this reason, hardness is typically addressed with treatment of water for the whole house or building rather
than just at a specific faucet.
Hardness minerals can be reduced in water for the whole house to
make it “softer” by using one of the following means:
·
Chemical softening — lime softening, hot and cold; lime-soda
softening
·
Membrane separation softening — Nano filtration
·
Cation exchange softening — inorganic, carbonaceous, or organic
base exchangers
Click here for
national data on hard water occurrence from
the U.S. Geological Survey.
The
Water Quality Association (WQA) is a not-for-profit association for the
residential commercial, and industrial water treatment industry. WQA
represents more than 2,500 member companies around the globe. Our
membership is comprised of equipment manufacturers, suppliers,
dealers and distributors of water quality improvement products and
services.
WQA
proudly serves as an educator of water treatment professionals, certifier of
water treatment products, public information resource and voice of the water
quality improvement industry.
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