Water Softener Hooked Up to Cold
Dispelling Myths About Hooking Up Only Hot Water to Your Softener
Sep 3, 2007
The water softener should be hooked up to both hot and cold throughout the house--including the cold water in the kitchen faucet.
Drinking Soft Water Is Not Bad for Health
Salt in the water softener tank does not dissolve and magically make the water “soft.” Soft water is actually water with the minerals and heavy metals taken out of it. The function of the salt is to create a salty brine that cleans the ionic-charged resin that pulls the minerals out of the water. Very little salt is in the softened water. In a whole gallon of water, there is about the same amount of salt as in a slice of white bread.
Here are some of the effects of using hard water versus soft water in the entire house.
Laundry and Soft Water
Clothes are washed in hot, warm, and cold. Most people only wash their whites in hot water and the rest of the laundry is washed in warm or cold. Having only the hot water softened means that the clothes will be still washing in hard water. The warm, remember, would be a mix of hot, softened water plus cold, hard water.
Lint in the dryer is caused by the very fine particles of minerals scraping away at the fibers of the clothes every wash cycle. It's well known that it is the washing of the clothes that wears them out, not the actual wearing of them.
Dishwasher and Soft Water
Most dishwashers are hooked up to the cold-water plumbing because dishwashers have their own internal heating unit to heat the water hot enough to sterilize the dishes. If the cold water going into the dishwasher is hard water, then it could be destroying the appliance with the minerals, not to mention the hard water spots and the wear on the dishes. The glassware might look like someone took fine sandpaper to them. It is not unusual for residents of communities with very hard water to buy a new dishwasher every 5-7 years.
Soft Water Protects Plumbing
According to the Water Quality Association, “hard water ruins plumbing at an estimated $2.7 billion per year.” The minerals encrust the inside of the horizontal pipes, elbow pipes, and appliances.
Bathing in Soft Water
Stepping into a hot shower, the skin pores open up. If there are minerals in the water (remember, warm is a mix of hot and cold) then those minerals will clog up skin pores and block the natural oils in the skin from lubricating itself. The chlorine in city water can also aggravate the drying effect. Some water softeners come with an additional filter that removes chemicals such as chlorine.
Cleaning With Soft Water
According to Ohio State University, “the average family spends an extra 80 hours per year cleaning due to hard water.” That’s the equivalent of two whole work weeks! The hard water stains and the soap scum caused by hard water does take more time to clean than soft water.
Here’s why. Soap draws dirt away by sudsing up and rinses easily with soft water. When the water is hard, the soap tries to draw the minerals as well as the dirt, and that doesn’t work so well to rinse easily away. The minerals are too heavy to be pulled out of the water like the finer dirt particles. This is how soap scum is created, and why clothes can get dingy and faded.
Washing Cars With Soft Water
Wash cars in soft water so that hard water stains do not create the extra step of drying the car by hand. The minerals in the water are not good for the paint, either.
Drinking Water
The benefits of having soft water throughout the house far outweigh the perceived downside of having a little salt in the drinking water. It is better to get used to the taste of softened water knowing that it is much better for your health than ingesting inorganic minerals and heavy metals. Consumers also have the option of investing in a reverse osmosis filtration system to remove any sodium that is leaching through into the house from older, less efficient water softener models.
Find out more about minerals in drinking water and levels of contaminants that might be of concern.
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