Water Filtration: Filtering Hard Water
Water is a vital part of human life. It is one of the most basic necessities that without which, one couldn’t live through a week. In this article, water will be classified into two types, namely soft and hard water. The former is water which has been filtered using sodium to get rid of impurities and foreign bodies. Hard water on the other hand is untouched water which consists of various dissolved minerals, including magnesium and calcium ions.
Importance of removing water hardness
Hard water can be obtained in any area in which there is abundance of minerals such as copper, calcium, and iron, and other heavy metals. In our homes, water is used for various purposes, including sanitation, preparation of food, and especially drinking. Back in the days when the natural bodies of water were yet to be contaminated by various industries, tap water or the water that we get straight from our faucets were guaranteed safe and potable. Today however, this is no longer the case. We are never sure these days just how much of these harmful minerals are in our tap.
Chlorine plays a crucial part in water treatment in municipals for almost a century. Almost all municipal water treatment facilities use chlorine as their primary purifying agent, and today most US residents now have chlorinated water running through their pipes and down their home faucets. However, chlorine has been identified as a kind of poison. Chlorine-containing water has been related to the increase and development of respiratory problems such as asthma due to its being vaporized faster as compared to water. Prior to installing any filtration systems in your homes, it would be best if you first conduct a water test to check the degree of hardness and the amount of impurities that run through your water system.
The quickest way to have this done is to get a free water test from your Culligan man. While some municipalities take the initiative of publishing water test results for the community’s reference, these results are sometimes too technical for you to be able to make much use of them. In order to remove hardness of water in Montgomery County it would be best to clearly identify the properties of the agents that have caused hardness in the water. Some whole house water filtration systems aren’t designed to filter all contaminations. The latter are designed to be positioned at the point of entry of water from a municipal or private water source to the household plumbing line.
Point of use water filtration systems are designed to be positioned at the faucet. To get better filtration, choosing the best water filter for hard water is your best course of action. This could be any one particular filtration system, or a combination of two, such as a combination of a whole house system and a point of use or an under-the-counter filtration system. Deciding what combination works best depends on the amount of different contaminants in your water.
Water filtration systems and reverse osmosis
The filtration process for hard water often has several stages, often starting by taking away the coarse contaminants which could clog filter holes in filters used in later stages. Whole-house filtration systems don’t just provide you with an overall better water quality, but it also offers better air quality, because of the fact that it has rid your water system, and therefore your household, of chlorine. At present, activated carbon is the go-to agent of most water filtration processes, using it to physically and chemically separate foreign bodies from the water itself. Activated carbon filters are used more and more by water filtration systems to remove harmful chemicals such as pesticides from water. Less developed areas of the region are more likely to have high concentrations of contaminants as compared to the more developed ones. For instance, a water system in Chester County might not be as needed in a place like Delaware County.
Reverse osmosis, another commonly used water purification process, is used specially for potable water. This is because it has high sodium content, as well as other components that are of large molecular compositions. The water is filtered by letting it pass through tiny pores, which screens out the larger particles of contaminants from getting through. However, in places where chemicals such as herbicides and pesticides could mix in with the public water source, a carbon filtration system should be paired with reverse osmosis to deal with the finer particles of these chemicals. Areas away from crops and crop-growing areas such as Atlantic County make good use of reverse osmosis.
