Post date: Oct 12, 2014 10:01:43 PM
Taos clearly has hard water. The land was formed under a great inland sea and left limestone and sandstone to form the mountains. The water of various (many, actually) wells in Taos county range from 32 to 640 mg/L of CaCO3. Since I come from Seattle, where the water is notably soft and pure, this is a big difference.
But is the water hard enough to bother with a water softener?
Modern laundry and dish detergents all contain softening agents, so that is not a major consideration, as it once was.
I have noticed a film build up in the sink in only two weeks. The film does come off the chrome drain stopper, for instance, with scrubbing, but I don’t want to scrub all the wash basin surfaces every week. And lime will build up inside the water pipes and the water heater.
A home water softener costs about $500 plus installation. It will require bags of salt to recharge. The time between recharges depends, of course, on just how much Calcium and Magnesium the water contains and how much water I have used.
I estimated my water use in the blog entry titled “Water in Taos”. Omitting toilet use and irrigation, which I would not soften, the monthly requirement is for 680 gallons of softened water per person per month.
A small home water softener has the capacity to remove 32,000 grains of hardness. At 64 mg/grain that is 2 kilograms, or 4.5 pounds of calcium and magnesium per refresh.
The hardest water has 640 mg/Liter hardness. One refresh would handle 3200 liters, or about 800 gallons of this very hard water. The ‘softest’ well water in the county would require a refresh about every 16,000 gallons.
I can expect to refresh the resin between 2 months and a year.
Ah, but the social-cultural aspects. I grew up on the coast of California with very hard water. Even with a water softener (on the hot water only), I noticed that soap disappeared quickly when rinsing hands. Then I moved to Seattle, which has very soft water. So now I am accustomed to soft water. So I asked the neighbors if anyone has a water softener.
They expressed disdain for soft water and showed me web sites that claim that calcium and magnesium promote health and the sodium is bad for you. I found web sites that show that the amount of sodium is trivial, and the calcium and magnesium released into a septic tank (we are on city sewer) is actually helpful.
So it is a matter of religion. Given the number of wars raging across the world in the name of religion, or based on beliefs with no basis in fact, I am a bit dismayed that I might be inciting a (probably small bit of) difficulty.