Your water quality impacts every aspect of your life. Unfortunately, measuring water hardness is difficult without expertise. If you think you are experiencing symptoms of hard water in your home, resolving it is essential to prevent costly damage and eliminate unseemly stains, blemishes, and accretions. Here is how to tell if you have hard or soft water:
Hard water has a significant amount of dissolved minerals, most notably calcium, magnesium, chalk, and lime, while soft water is treated and only has sodium.
Hard water increases electricity bills and damages water heating systems, and this damage requires expensive repairs. Resolving these water issues requires installing a water softener, which is a filtration system. Is your Suffolk County water hard or soft? Here is how to tell.
To determine if you have hard or soft water, start by observing things that come into contact with your water. Symptoms of hard water include:
One quick way to determine if your Suffolk county water is hard or soft is the water bottle test. For this test, you need a plastic water bottle with a tight-fitting cap.
Fill the bottle one-third with tap water and add a few drops of pure liquid soap. Shake the mixture for approximately 15 seconds, then set the bottle down. Observe it for bubbles. If your water generates no foamy bubbles or it looks cloudy or milky, you have hard water.
Soft water foams up quickly and creates bubbles, and the water at the bottom will be clear. Remember that some manufacturers make soaps with detergents, so they foam and bubble in hard and soft water. Use a soap with no detergents or perfumes.
For a more accurate evaluation, contact your city or water provider and request their latest quality report. These are also often accessible online with a quick search.
Unfortunately, these reports can be very technical, so understanding them may be difficult. Moreover, they may not reflect the water from your tap because they test it before it leaves their facility, so it can accumulate impurities as it travels through the piping to your home.
A test kit is also an excellent, more accurate option. These are usually available at home improvement stores for $5 to $10 and come with test strips and a color chart.
Fill a glass with cold water from your sink, insert a strip for a few seconds, and then remove it. Do not place it under running water as it can skew results. The strip will change colors. Each color indicates a different gradient of hardness.
The most convenient and accurate method for determining if your Suffolk county water is hard or soft is contacting a water filtration company for a free evaluation. Most companies offer free assessments.
These professionals understand the precise methodology needed to gauge your water hardness, how to interpret results, and what steps you need to take to soften it.
If you have determined you have hard water in Suffolk County, installing a water softener is imperative to preventing extensive water damage. However, if you are still unsure, you need a professional opinion. At Aqua Doctor, we have been installing water softener filtration systems for over 12 years to eliminate hard water. Our premier systems are cost-effective and low-maintenance. Book a free assessment to diagnose your water hardness.
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