Don’t you just hate water spotting on your drinking glasses when you take them out of the dishwasher? Especially when your Waterford, MI or Oxford, MI home has a water softener. I mean, isn’t the water softening system supposed to keep that from happening? Kotz Heating, Cooling, and Plumbing knows how frustrating this can be so we wanted to take a closer look at why it can happen.
Total Dissolved Solids
Water softeners reduce the amount of hard minerals in your home’s water but do NOT reduce total dissolved solids (TDS). Water softening removes the mineral content that makes water “hard”, but there are many other dissolved solids in the water that are not removed by a water softener. Those solids can also cause a film or residue to be left on dishes and glasses.
Why it Happens
Water is a great solvent and dissolves just about everything it comes in contact with. As a result, the total dissolved solids can also include many elements in addition to the minerals a water softener is designed to neutralize. Water softening uses an ion exchange process to replace hard minerals with sodium (salt) ions, but the other dissolved solids aren’t affected by the ion exchange.
Salt Spotting
Water conditioning is certainly better for cleaning and bathing and a water softener will extend the life of appliances like washing machines and water heaters. But the salt content from a water softening system can sometimes leave sodium spots. The good news is, unlike soap scum and limescale, sodium spotting can be wiped off with a towel.
Is There a Solution
One way to eliminate TDS from your water is with a reverse osmosis system. Many Waterford, MI and Oxford, MI homes use RO for drinking and cooking. The filtered water is usually dispensed from a single faucet, but Kotz also has whole house reverse osmosis filtering systems. This gives you RO quality water from every tap in the house, including outdoor faucets. By the way, reverse osmosis is used by many car washes which allows them to advertise “spot-free rinses” and you can have the same thing in your home.
Don’t be Afraid to Ask for Help
If you’re ready to ditch the spots and make your home’s water supply cleaner and healthier, then call Kotz Heating, Cooling, and Plumbing. We’ll explain the available choices and let you decide what’s best for your home. There’s always great information available to you by liking and following us on Facebook and Twitter.
