Hard Water Q&A: Answers to Your Questions

[Math Is Hard]

Do you have hard water? Do you use a filtration system?

I get a lot of build up on the faucet and on glass dishes that sit out for a while with water in them (like the cat's 2nd water dish that I don't change every day).

Can hard water cause kidney stones or other health problems?

 

[zomgwtf]

Do you have hard water? Do you use a filtration system?

I get a lot of build up on the faucet and on glass dishes that sit out for a while with water in them (like the cat's 2nd water dish that I don't change every day).

Can hard water cause kidney stones or other health problems?

I'm pretty sure a study was done that concluded hard water is not related to health problems. However if you do drink A LOT of it and have extra uptake of calcium then surely kidney stones will follow. So hard water does not 'cause' kidney stones, a person not paying attention to their nutrion causes themselvse to get them.

I personally would use a filtration system though. I hear that bathing in hard water is not good and might cause bacteria to not be washed off your skin... and it makes washing dishes a pain in the butt as you mentioned.

The downside to filtration systems is the water isn't fit for consumption and it's expensive. So maybe you could use some sort of chemical filtration just for dishes etc?

 

[mgb_phys]

Hard water is good for you - lots of minerals
I just moved to a place where all the water comes direct from rainwater, and is completely tasteless.

 

[Proton Soup]

hard water is great, especially if it has lots of magnesium in it.

 

[MotoH]

Hard water is the devil. Well the municipal water supply is bad in general. Our intake pipe is in the middle of a river just downstream from the old chemical dump station for the paper mill. We have one of those expensive water filtration devices you screw onto your faucet head as our water isn't that hard, but it still tastes horrible.

 

[leroyjenkens]

If hard water gave you kidney stones, wouldn't something like a multivitamin do the same?

 

[mgb_phys]

Hard water is the devil. ... Our intake pipe is in the middle of a river just downstream from the old chemical dump station for the paper mill.

Rather unfair to blame hardwater !
Might be better to blame the town planners - it's always bad when siblings marry (and enter local government)

 

[MotoH]

Rather unfair to blame hardwater !
Might be better to blame the town planners - it's always bad when siblings marry (and enter local government)

I'll blame whomever I want thank you very much!

And to be fair they were first cousins.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

This thread reminded me of a test question about hard water, received by email recently.

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/4751/icesd.jpg

 

[Evo]

That reminds me of this (sorry MIH)

http://www.uoregon.edu/~gilkey/dirhumor/ExamQuestions/ExamQuestions.html

 

[Pythagorean]

hardwater here tastes terrible, CaCO3.

I use a Brita filter for drinking water, but I don't bother for showers/dishes.

 

[rewebster]

I've tasted sulfer in some other town's water, that's my personal 'worst' tasting water--

-the best 'city' water that I've had was New York (city) tap water--it tasted almost sweet

 

[leroyjenkens]

I've tasted sulfer in some other town's water, that's my personal 'worst' tasting water--

-the best 'city' water that I've had was New York (city) tap water--it tasted almost sweet

Sweet? That's not good. That's like walking into a bathroom and smelling pot roast. It smells good at first, until you realize it's not pot roast you're smelling.

Or maybe you are, just in another form.

 

[Astronuc]

Mg and too much Ca could promote kidney stones in cats and contribute to cystitis. We have our cats on a low ash diet. Our oldest cats (now deceased) had problems with cystitis and it probably shortened their lifespans.

Our home system has a water softener and demineralizer - to remove Fe, Ni, Cd and Mn from the water.

Our house sits astride a huge deposit of iron and manganese ore.

 

[dlgoff]

I remember my father telling me about a local television company that hired him to help trouble-shoot their photographic film development system problem of not developing. Turned out that they were using water softeners that were so good that there wasn't anything in it to "scrub" the film. Went to using hard water and it worked perfectly.

 

[Moonbear]

I've tasted sulfer in some other town's water, that's my personal 'worst' tasting water--

South Jersey has places with a lot of sulfur content in the water, especially near the shore. It's tough to even shower with it and convince yourself you're clean. But, strangely, it was also very soft water, which made the showering part even worse, because you could rinse for a half hour and still feel like you had a film of soap on your skin.

Where I live now has fairly hard water. I don't do anything about it, just need to spend a little extra time scrubbing around the faucets every so often to remove the deposits on them.

 

[rewebster]

South Jersey has places with a lot of sulfur content in the water, especially near the shore. It's tough to even shower with it and convince yourself you're clean. But, strangely, it was also very soft water, which made the showering part even worse, because you could rinse for a half hour and still feel like you had a film of soap on your skin.

Where I live now has fairly hard water. I don't do anything about it, just need to spend a little extra time scrubbing around the faucets every so often to remove the deposits on them.

I think people often get used to hard water---it leaves the film on the skin (soap scum--the squeakiness in the hair is like rosin on a bow to help the strings vibrate)

 

[Math Is Hard]

Mg and too much Ca could promote kidney stones in cats and contribute to cystitis. We have our cats on a low ash diet. Our oldest cats (now deceased) had problems with cystitis and it probably shortened their lifespans.

Our home system has a water softener and demineralizer - to remove Fe, Ni, Cd and Mn from the water.

Our house sits astride a huge deposit of iron and manganese ore.

That worries me, since I have an elderly cat -although from what I know, male cats are more susceptible to that problem, and my cat is female.

Funny, but the reason I was thinking about this to begin with is because my veterinarian's assistant was talking about her own kidney stones.

 

[Astronuc]

That worries me, since I have an elderly cat -although from what I know, male cats are more susceptible to that problem, and my cat is female.

Funny, but the reason I was thinking about this to begin with is because my veterinarian's assistant was talking about her own kidney stones.

In our experience, male cats seem more susceptible, but we had a Calico (female) who had chronic cystitis problems, especially when stressed. We gave her acidifier (Urinap (sp?) or similar compound), and feed our cats low ash food.

 

[EnumaElish]

These are hard questions about water, MIH

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_water (footnotes omitted):

The World Health Organization says that "there does not appear to be any convincing evidence that water hardness causes adverse health effects in humans."

But:

... [an] overview of the topic [...], unlike the WHO, sets some recommendations for the maximum and minimum levels of calcium (40-80 ppm) and magnesium (20-30 ppm) in drinking water, and a total hardness expressed as the sum of the calcium and magnesium concentrations of 2-4 mmol/L. Other studies have shown weak correlations between cardiovascular health and water hardness. A UK nationwide study, funded by the Department of Health, is investigating anecdotal evidence that childhood eczema may by correlated with hard water.

And:

More than 85% of American homes have hard water.

Se also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_softener