What hard water is doing inside a North Shore home, and what to do about it
Hard water is water with a lot of dissolved calcium and magnesium in it. It’s safe to drink. The problem is what it leaves behind. Every time hard water is heated or evaporates, those minerals drop out and stick to whatever they touch: the bottom of your water heater, the inside of your dishwasher, your showerhead, your faucets, the inside of your pipes.
On the North Shore, the water comes from Lake Michigan and runs moderately hard, around 7 to 8 grains per gallon. That’s not extreme, but it’s enough that over a few years it shortens the life of every appliance that heats water and clogs anything with a small opening.
How do you know if your home has hard water?
You can usually tell by looking. Hard water leaves white, chalky mineral deposits (limescale) around faucets and showerheads, soap scum that won’t rinse off shower glass, cloudy spots on glassware out of the dishwasher, and laundry that feels stiff. If you want a number, a hardness test strip from the hardware store takes 30 seconds, or we can test it when we’re at the house.
Five signs of hard water in your house
- White crust on faucets, aerators, and showerheads. Showerheads start spraying sideways as the nozzles clog.
- Soap scum on shower doors and tile that comes back a day after you clean it. The calcium in the water reacts with soap and leaves a film.
- Cloudy glasses and spotted dishes out of the dishwasher, no matter what detergent you use.
- Stiff, scratchy towels and dull-looking dark clothes. Minerals get trapped in the fabric.
- Appliances that die young. A dishwasher, washing machine, or water heater that fails at 7 or 8 years instead of 12 to 15.
Those are the symptoms you can see. The expensive damage is happening where you can’t: inside the water heater, inside the dishwasher’s heating element, and inside the pipes.
Why does hard water destroy water heaters and appliances?
Because scale forms fastest where water gets hot. Calcium carbonate drops out of solution when water is heated, so it collects on the one thing every appliance needs to work: the heating surface.
In a tank water heater, scale settles into a layer on the bottom of the tank. That layer insulates the water from the burner, so the burner runs longer to heat the same water. The steel under the scale overheats, the glass lining cracks, and the tank rusts through early. That popping or rumbling you hear from an older water heater is water boiling under the scale.
In a tankless water heater, scale coats the inside of the heat exchanger and chokes off flow. In a dishwasher or washing machine, it coats the heating element and clogs the small valves and jets. Water heating is roughly a fifth of a typical home’s energy use, and a scaled-up heater is paying more for less hot water every month.
A Battelle Memorial Institute study done for the Water Quality Association found that water heaters running on hard water lost a significant share of their efficiency within months, while the same units on softened water held their factory efficiency. The same research found soft water lets you use up to half as much detergent and soap for the same result.
Pipes go last. Scale slowly narrows the inside of galvanized steel and, to a lesser degree, copper pipe. It takes many years to close a pipe off, but a partial buildup is a common reason the upstairs shower has worse pressure than the downstairs one.
How do you protect your plumbing from hard water?
A whole-home water softener is the fix. It installs on the main water line where the supply enters the house, so every fixture and appliance downstream gets softened water.
Inside the softener is a tank of resin beads. As hard water passes through, the calcium and magnesium stick to the beads and are swapped for sodium or potassium. Every few days the softener rinses the beads with a salt brine to recharge them, which is why you add salt to the brine tank.
A few things to know before you buy:
- Sizing matters. The right size depends on your water hardness, how many people are in the house, and the pipe size. An undersized unit runs out of capacity and lets hard water through; an oversized one wastes salt.
- Outdoor spigots should be bypassed. Your lawn and garden don’t need softened water, and it saves salt.
- Salt-free “conditioners” are not softeners. They change how scale forms so it sticks less, but they don’t remove the minerals. They’re a reasonable option if you can’t have a drain or don’t want to handle salt, but they don’t give you the soft-water benefits for laundry and dishes.
- Softened water adds a small amount of sodium. If someone in the house is on a strict low-sodium diet, use potassium chloride instead of salt, or keep an unsoftened cold tap in the kitchen for drinking.
Frequently asked questions
Is Lake Michigan water hard?
Moderately. It typically runs 7 to 8 grains per gallon. That’s enough to cause limescale on fixtures and shorten water heater life, which is why softeners are common on the North Shore even though the water is safe to drink.
Will a water softener lower my energy bills?
It helps. A water heater with no scale on its heating surface heats water faster and uses less gas or electricity. The savings are modest month to month; the bigger payoff is the appliances lasting years longer.
How often does a water softener need salt?
Most households add a bag every four to eight weeks. Check the brine tank once a month. If the salt is below the water line, add more.
Can hard water scale close off copper pipes completely?
It takes decades, and it’s much more of a problem in galvanized steel than in copper. Partial buildup causing low pressure at upstairs fixtures is far more common than a fully blocked pipe.
Do I still need a softener if I have a tankless water heater?
It’s a good idea. Tankless heat exchangers are more sensitive to scale than tanks are, and some manufacturers require softened or filtered water to keep the warranty in force.
Water softener and filtration installation on the North Shore
Biagi Plumbing has been serving North Shore homes since 1989, in Evanston, Wilmette, Winnetka, Glencoe, Highland Park, Lake Forest, Lake Bluff, Deerfield, Northbrook, Glenview, Libertyville, Buffalo Grove, and the surrounding communities.
If your fixtures are crusting over or your appliances keep dying early, call Biagi Plumbing at (847) 512-8921 for a free water filtration proposal. We’ll come out, test your water, look at what you have now, and give you a written recommendation, whether that’s a softener, a whole-house filter, or both. And if a softener isn’t the right answer for your situation, we’ll tell you that too.