The hard water issue arises when your tap water contains too much mineral sediments in its composition and leaves behind those minerals on the surface when it dries off. These stains are called hard water stains.
It might be quick to posit that hard water based on the footprints it leaves they are unhealthy. However, they are quite the opposite. They contain some of those minerals recommended by doctors.
You have to take in enough minerals into your system so you can prevent diseases because they will build up in your immune system. They might be suitable for your body system, but they are not good for your plumbing.
How to Get Rid of Hard Water?
Hard water is considered the number one reason for rusts in plumbing systems. Household tools like water heaters, dishwashers, and washing machines can also suffer from the devastating effects of hard water.
There are so many ways to rid yourself of this problem. A powerful shower water filter reduces the scale of minerals in the water. Descales can play a significant role in reducing hard water.
Below are other such ways.
1. Water softeners
Removing hard water in this day and age is quite easy. Install a water softener to take away mineral sediments like calcium and magnesium.
Whenever hard water goes through this device, it passes through the resin bed embedded in it, which helps remove hard ions and replace them with soft ions.
This makes the water entering your plumbing pure and soft. The mechanism works with salt. When the resin bed is filled up with all of the hardened sediments. It needs to be cleaned then the salt can be replaced with a new one.
Water softeners also help clean the water and some softeners can be installed under your kitchen sinks fixed with a water dispenser. This helps make sure that the water you are drinking Is clear and of the highest quality filtering most of the extra chemicals in the water.
2. Vinegar
Most of the sediments in hard water are calcium. They react with potent acids like Vinegar.
All-natural Vinegar dissolves calcium in about an hour. When you find a lot of white stains or spot problems using distilled Vinegar will help. Vinegar will not only make your water soft. But it will destroy molds and kill bacteria and germs. Your dishwasher will also be left clean by the end of the day.
Hard water can make soap scum build-up. But vinegar is a healthy solution. All you have to do is rinse with one quarter apple cider vinegar and three quarter filtered water.
A lot of people miss the fact that using the hot water heater contributes to the build-up of mineral stains in the house. When mineral spreads in the hottest cabinet of our plumbing.
In time the water will start to accumulate scale. So reducing the heater temperature will reduce the speed of gathering all of those scales.
It is also pivotal that you flush the water in the water heater from time to time so that sediments do not clog up the pipes. Where there is hard water, there can be problems getting the heater to settle all of those unnecessary junks at the base of the reservoir.
3. Rinse aid
Hard water requires that you use more soap before it foams. This is the result of a chemical reaction where; soap molecules that are negatively charged on one side aids the particles to dissolve in the water.
However, the other end of the molecule tries to keep oil particles in the water. Hard water works against the soap molecules because they contain positively charged calcium atoms.
These two form a rinse aid minimizes hard water deposits on the dishes and glassware. Rinse aids can potentially remove years of hard water stains and build up.
These products made for hard water can withstand those positive charges of the calcium, making the soap easy to rinse.
4. Appliance cleaners
We have earlier talked about removing any calcium build up in your appliance. The pipe system also has to be free from any hard water sediments.
Over time, all of the build-ups in the devices become hard to remove. When you regularly clean the pipes, you can find satisfaction in the fact that the pipes are well maintained.
There are appliance cleaning systems readily available in stores; some of these cleaners can be abrasive, acidic, or chlorine-based. Vinegar will also help clean your tools effectively, bringing an inexpensive solution to the mix.
In small appliances such as the coffee makers, you have to pour from time to time two cups of white vinegar through the coffee maker.
The white vinegar gives the coffee maker a thorough cleaning, especially in hard to reach area. This would increase the life span of the appliance while leaving your coffee maker tasting great.
How to Get Rid of Hard Water Stains?
Hard water stains can be menacing and removing them as soon as possible can be useful in maintaining a clean and shiny home. You should purchase green cleaning products for a better environment. Below are the steps to follow when cleaning hard water stains:
1. Hydrogen peroxide
This chemical does a very good job of replacing traditional cleaners. They do an excellent job in the bathroom in confronting soaps scum combined with hard water stains accumulating in the bottom of tubs and other metal appliances like the faucets.
You can pour the peroxide directly on the scum or in any hard water spots and build-ups. And you can also create a supercharged solution with baking soda. Any way you want to clean it you have to make it sit for 30 minutes after which you wash away with filtered water and soap.
2. Cleaning vinegar
There are times that we feel our regular cleaning solution does not work as it was marketed to. What if I told you that you do not need the typical cleaning agent to get that stain off? Crazy, right?
Well, it is time to take advantage of our homemade cleaning agent, Vinegar pretty much does a lot of things, and they can be used both for cleaning and also for cooking. However, there are different variants we want to use cleaning vinegar.
Cleaning vinegar is super potent and acidic with the capability to clear out all those mold sots and calcium sediment deposits in your sink and tubs.
Simply, pour this tool into the toilet bowl and scrub thoroughly. Do not be surprised about the potentials of the cleaning vinegar. They can remove all those stains very quickly and magically.
3. Apple cider vinegar
It can be quite easy for the lesser-known cleaning vinegar to take a lot of credit because of its cleaning power. Not mention this variant of Vinegar will be wrong.
Aside from being another versatile disinfectant. They can clear pores! This variant can even clean glasses and windows that are also troubled by the deposits of the mineral sediments caused by hard water.
4. Baking soda
Do you have ceramic tiles in your bathroom? Then it is easy to suggest that you might love it at certain times and at other times you can not stand looking at the tiles.
Ceramic tiles give your home and bathroom give your home style. Hard water can do a lousy job on the enamel and the grout, this can make even the most stylish ceramic tile looking sharp.
Fixing this is easy. All you need is a handful of baking soda.
Directly pouring the baking soda water mixed in water in the affected areas in your house and giving it some time for it to react –around a minute should be enough.
When you finish, gently scrub. And you will find out that they work very well.
5. Toothpaste
Have you ever noticed you glass cups looking cloudy? It can be embarrassing offering those to guests. And when you put them in the dishwasher. It makes no difference. All of those mineral deposits make the cup look unwashed.
Vinegar can do enough to get the blur out of those cups. Toothpaste makes your teeth shine, and they can also make our cups do the same.
Simply put on a bit of regular white toothpaste then rinse off. There are no more straightforward solutions than this.
How to Keep Your Shower Heads and Faucets Clean?
Of course, you have to prevent the stains in the first place before you go through stressful situations to clean them. You can use a shower water filter to keep the shower heads and faucets clean. These shower water filters work efficiently to soften the water.
Below are the four major steps to take preventing hard water stains:
- Always keep the surface of your hose dry, so as to cut down on the number of mineral sediments that gather in the wet surface.
- Always use mineral fighting solutions.
- Maintaining a cleaning habit give those mineral sediments no chance to accumulate
- Get a water softener: as discussed in the above segment, we talked about the benefits water softeners bring to your bathroom.
Hard water stain has proved to be the greatest problem diligent homeowners have to face. Over this article, we have tried to provide you ample information on how to get rid of hard water and all the issues it brings about.
If we can make your battle with hard water a little easier, we’ll feel satisfied.
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