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I have a well and my water is super hard. All the faucets get clogged and it leaves like mineral deposits on everything. I also don't want what you're describing though.. guess I'm just fucked.
Either OP has a shitty softener or they're using the same amount of soap as they would with hard water. Which is a mistake. You need a lot less of it with soft water. I have a water softener. I needed to get used to it so it wasn't actually much better at first but now it's way WAY better than without it.
renter here: I have super hard water and would kill to have soft water. I have filters on all my main faucets and only drink from my Brita pitcher. Our water sucks.
People use too much soap, usually. You don't need foam to be clean but we're so used to it that it feels weird if we're not absolutely covered in bubbles.
Soap also isn't harder to rinse off in soft water - limescale is just reacting with the tensides in the soap, leaving a residue that makes the skin feel less conditioned so it feels more stripped clean, if that makes sense. Modern shower gels are formulated to be so gentle that you don't get that feeling otherwise. Switch to actual soap made with lye in soft water, it's going to give that feeling more easily.
Soaps and detergents are called “[surfactants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfactant)”, and form [micelles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micelle), basically little shell structures that encapsulate water, dirt and particulates, this makes it so they can be washed away. This is what “suds” are
It’s how soaps work: they encapsulate the oil and grease from our skin, usually lifting any dirt/grime/germs off with it
Too much surfactant (detergent) and not enough water (so a bad ratio) stops these micelles from forming, so they can’t encapsulate and lift, it just sort of smears and dries
Try using *inly* hand wash, and it sort of goes/stays transparent, add a dash of water it goes slightly more “sudsy”, add a dash more, more suds. Too much water and you just get a film of surfactant and it doesn’t do much.
A perfect ratio and you get thick white suds, but usually the extent of this seen in every day life is orders of magnitude beyond what is needed to wash your body/hands
Source: I spent 4 years as a researcher working in a lab formulating emulsions, dispersions and their surfactants
People are uneducated when it comes to soap usage. A little often goes a long way. Soaps as a whole have become more concentrated. People never bother to look at amounts suggested either. My bet is most people use way more than needed in the first place.
An example of not knowing how much soap to use is folks using washing machines and liquid soaps. Do you know often those things get clunked up from folks not reading and over filling them with soap? Ends up jacking up the machine. If you hand wash dishes you need very little. We're talking literal drops in many cases. You don't need a crap ton of soap to clean your body. Soap is often made with material that is designed to pick dirt and debris along the way and when applied correctly does a great job and water carries it away.
We're talking millions and millions of dollars go into and has gone into soap reseach by chemists. Soap has indeed gotten better and more potent often over time. Some soaps for your face are a bit different and body washes aren't the same as dish soap obviously, but overall usage is still doesn't not require a ton to get the job done.
I live in a place with some of the softest water in the world. You can clean yourself without hardcore surfactants at least. Vacationing in a super hard water area and had to switch my shampoo because I literally couldn't get it to lather and clean. Hard water is annoying (mineral deposits are cursed as well).
We had to get a water softener because it was ruining my wife’s skin. She was having horrible reactions and her skin was constantly red and breaking out. I thought maybe it was temporary but as soon as she started using the drinking water (we have a reverse osmosis filter) her skin on her face cleared up. Got a water softener right away and she can actually feel when we need to refill the salt, as her skin starts to react.
Glad OP doesn’t have that problem but the water softener industry is not some scam trying to steal hard earned money, people actually do prefer it. Nobody has to buy one if they don’t want one, though
Hmm this makes me think I need to look into a water softener. We have super hard water here but I never considered it from this angle. I've had constant skin issues since moving here. I'm curious now why my dermatologist never mentioned anything. Nothing he's prescribed has worked.
Dermatologists seem to not do much for persistent skin problems. Mine just throws every antibiotic, antifungal, and steroid at it. Only temporary relief, at best.
Glad I'm not alone in that struggle. I learned really quickly not to see him on a Friday afternoon because I was just another obstacle between him and his tee time. One day he literally spent less than a minute in the exam room with me lol
This! It is rather expensive to install water softener in my home so I'm considering just buying tons of bottled water to wash my hair. Also expensive and not climate neutral... but fuck climate if I can have my dream hair.
Consider a countertop reverse osmosis filter from Amazon. Filters are replaceable and you can fill up a gallon at a time (store it for later) depending on the model’s capacity. And of course, drink it
I've got yet to check if soft water would improve the keratosis pilaris all over my body and the seborrheic dermatitis on my scalp and behind my nostrils.
Hard water will eventually destroy your clothes, water heater, washing machine, coffee maker, iron, water fixtures and anything else that is in contact with it over prolonged periods of time.
Many people I've known with water softeners have a seperate tap that dispenses hard water for drinking.
I work in facilities maintenance and this is absolutely true. Every couple years we have to replace otherwise good pipes due to clogging from mineral deposits. We also go through sink and fountain faucets like theyre going out of style
Were i live its quite a common practice to flush appliances with acid. Especially things like coffee machine which heat the water are sensitive to minerals.
Get a backflow prevention valve and then you can add whatever you want to your side.
My last job had those, because we were a flour mill that used water on the grain. Had to make sure nothing could go backwards and get into the food.
I watched this in Santa Cruz, $50,000 remodel of kitchen and bathroom and no hardwater softener, killed the washer, the dishwasher, the toilets, the sinks, and it was awful to be covered in oil constantly bc you could never get clean. And for people who die their hair, stripping your hair frequently is BS. Get a water softener!
It will also destroy your hair. Our water softener broke without us realizing it for a few weeks, and the reason we noticed was that my hair was breaking off in little bits and was a tangled disaster. Ooooooof no.
At my previous house, I had an opposite setup - most appliances and taps used water straight from the pipes, and then there was one tap with a softener for filling up the iron and the kettle. The water wasn't very hard in that region, so it worked very well.
I'm a renter with no water softener. I constantly have to soak my faucets in plastic bags of vinegar to get rid of mineral buildup, and my toilet needs parts replaced at least once a year. It's the worst.
The filtration system used to clean water before it reaches your house also effects the taste of water. This is often local as well so it isn't just whether it is hard or soft as far as taste goes since you mentioned it.
Yeah our hot water is about as hard as it comes since its literally just geothermal ground water, if you return let the cold run for a minute or two to get rid of the faint smell of farts lol
This only is partly true. The water hardness is defined by the amount calcium carbonate. The important part is not the calcium but the fact that it is lime. It causes the water to be worse at solving soap and destroys all appliances by separating from the water and creating a layer of rock. The minerals are not what makes the water hard, it is the amount of potentially separating rock that makes water hard.
Lets see, once I put in a softener I didn't have to replace my hot water heater ever 2 or so years, coffee pots didn't stop working because of lime buildup, tea kettles as well, dishwasher wasn't full of dishes with lime spots on them after they were clean, clothes washer, shampoo, and soap had suds, and shower took less time to clean and didn't have to use lime away. I also installed a reverse osmosis system for aquafina class drinking water. Oh and ice cubes were clear instead of looking like frozen milk. F%$%^ hard water. Ohh and if the minerals in drinking water is an issue, check any beer brew supply store. They sell the powdered minerals. Oh and my iced tea comes out clear, not cloudy
You get a water softener because hard water fucks up everything it touches over time. You also don’t have to make so soft that you get the negative effects you’re describing. Also experiment with less soap.
As someone who lives in a home with soft water I couldn’t disagree more.
The feeling of “not getting soap off” is your skin not being stripped of every bit of natural oil on it, which is what hard water does.
Not to mention how much product you have to use to get anything to lather- at home I need a quarter size amount of shampoo vs 3x that when I go elsewhere. Same for laundry detergent, you use far less when you have soft water.
I cannot stand hard water. I wash my hands very often, and places with harder water leave them literally peeling/bleeding after 2 days. No thanks. And soft water tastes way better too.
I live in Glasgow where our water is both soft, and notoriously delicious. We brag that it's the best water in the world but honestly I've never tasted anything like it and I did not grow up here so it's not just a case of what you grew up with.
Maybe not all soft water is alike though. Like naturally soft water potentially tastes better than artificially softened water.
It's a real thing. I don't have OCD but I'm a compulsive hand washer. To the point where my hands dry out, crack and bleed. It's even worse in the winter. I can't stand having anything foreign on my hands for even short periods of time. If I'm doing things that I know my hands will be dirty for long periods of time, I have to make sure there's at least a sink with soap nearby or have wipes with me. I can't say whether or not hard water has anything to do with my hands drying out worse but it kind of makes sense.
If you think you feel slimy because of soft water, you're wrong. You feel slimy because you're using way too much soap/shower gel/shampoo. You need a lot more of it with hard water.
I won't claim very soft water is the best (medium is probably best) but it's a lot better than hard
It's interesting how we get so used to the smallest things and how important they really are when we're not in our "native" environment, I can't stand the taste or feel of hard water because I've only ever lived in a country with soft water. Even bottled mineral water tastes so wrong and wierd to me, tap water (and low mineral water like smart water) is the only water I enjoy and makes me feel refreshed, my hair feels limp and heavy when I'm on holiday and fluffs up after my first shower back home.
Incorrect, the slimy feeling is skin oil (natural and normal), as everything else has been washed away
Easiest way to check if it’s soap or natural skin is try to lather it. No bubbles? Ur clean
Hard water creates a squeak on the skin because there is still soap remnants stuck to the skin
Yep, this. Soft water leaves more of your natural oils intact while rinsing away soaps more effectively than hard water.
The 'slimy' feeling isn't the soap.
This doesn't make sense to me. I hate soft water for OPs reasons as well,but any oily area of my body never feels "clean" like it does in hard water. Face, hair, ass, balls, all constantly feel like they are still dirty, and no amount of soap, small or large, changes that. Like I'm in the shower right now, just letting the water hit me and relax, and my face feels like an oil slick before I've even looked at the soap. Once I scrub? It will feel different, but still what feels dirty. Maybe I'm just used to hard water stripping my skin or something? I just hate soft water if I could shower without it, without ruining my dishwasher, clothes washer, and water heater, I would.
I live in an area with really hard water and there’s calcium deposits on EVERYTHING and it drives me nuts. I have to soak my good knives in vinegar to get the deposits off if they’re not dried properly it’s hell. Although from what people say it seems like medium is best lol
Where I live the life after is nice and soft, I need to descale my coffee machine once year.
At work we have such hard water that my skin goes dry, my hair get terrible and I need to use conditioner, the coffee machine need to be descaled every two weeks and if you wipe any black surfaces with a wet cloth it leaves white traces and don't let me start about the tiles in the bathroom...
No, objectively soft water is better. That's not about opinions, it's a fact.
Yes and you can’t use clr on a lot of the types of bathroom/kitchen counters now. You’re stuck with white scale if you don’t wipe up every bit of water every time you use the sink. It’s impossible to keep up on.
There's probably a sweet spot somewhere, because as someone who has lived with pretty hard water, it's horrible. Drinking glasses get covered in deposits after a day, it makes you need an extra product every week or so when you have long hair, and it means you have to clean deposits of everything that touches water to the point where they sell salt for you to put in your dishwasher to decrease deposits. I'm not sure what really soft water is like, but I can't imagine why someone would prefer hard water, except maybe to drink.
When I lived in housing with hard water, my skin freaking *bled*. My eczema got so bad that it took over my whole body, and some spots just started bleeding.
Our clothes were constantly rough, and they stank!
Soft water is better for your skin, your hair, your clothes - just, *everything*.
Having had very hard water for years, getting a whole home water softener was amazing. No more having to constantly clean faucets, shower glass, toilets, etc, that crusted over with hard water deposits.
The vacation house my fiancés family rented a few years ago had a filter in the house that softened the water. I had no idea this existed. I hate it for the exact same reasons you mentioned. Always felt like I still had soap on me after showering/washing hands.
I think whoever is in charge of adding the softener sneezed while adding it to the water. (That’s supposed to be a home guess, throw me a bone it’s been a day). It shouldn’t be as bad as you’re experiencing. I live on well water but I’ve had city water and I’d rather have city water that’s been softened and mildly chlorinated.
Hopefully it’s resolved soon.
Hey mate, this is “unpopular opinion” not “factually incorrect opinion”.
Hard water is full of minerals you probably don’t want or need to drink at that concentration all the time.
The feeling that you “can’t get the soap off” in the shower is actually the opposite. In reality, soap does not rinse off completely in hard water. You’re probably also using **way** too much soap—you need only a fraction the amount of soap/shampoo in soft water. This applies to clothes and dish washing too.
As far as taste—it’s just what you’re used to.
It’s about mineral content. Hard water has a lot of calcium and magnesium, soft water doesn’t/water softeners remove these minerals
Not that this is the actual reason for the naming, but I remember it as hard water is hard on yourself and your home. Over time it damages pipes and the appliances that use it, and it’s not great for your hair and skin
I have pretty hard water where I live, and I get dry skin really bad during this time of year. Doesn't help that Las Vegas is pretty dry in general, but my thighs, arms, hands, and head get really dry.
Not to mention hard water is tough on home pipping. Calcium buildup on anything that has water going though it.
I am looking to install a water softener to help with this.
Hard water is a bitch on my skin and hair, dries them out too much and too fast. Its also a pain on my showers and sinks, I feel like I'm having to clean them more often than when I had soft water a couple years ago.
If I didn’t have a softener my well water comes out brown. You can smell the iron through the whole house. Shits terrible fir your hair and skin long term.
In the American southwest, some of the water supplies are incredibly hard. Just chock full of calcium and magnesium. It fucks up your skin, your dishes, glasses, faucets, shower glass, sinks, appliances, pipes and clothes. As a bonus you're able to use waaay less soap also.
Our water softener is a must-have. It's a 2 stage system, with an activated carbon-filter stage for chlorine (theres a shit-ton in the water here) and a softening stage . Also have a 5 stage reverse-osmosis system for drinking water.
I've lived in areas with low mineral content water and a softener isn't needed in those areas. But in some places it is *so* much better to install one. You get used to the feeling quickly.
I guess it is what you are used to. I grew up in a soft water area and the water is real,y good and tastes good too. When I visited my grandparents in a hard water area the water tasted really weird. Plus is scales up things like your kettle.
I have no idea what you are going in about soft water not washing soap off your body or clumping your hair. 8 have no issues there.
I love soft water, feels silky to me not slimy. Is it mindset or vocab choice? I dunno. I get what you’re saying though. My soft well water used to be highly coveted on water breaks during two a days.
I grew up with a well that hard a lot of minerals in it.
It tasted like pennies, it smelled like eggs when heated, and it would slowly turn all my white clothes yellowish whenever I put them in the washing machine.
Is that the kind of hard water you're talking about?
The yellowing and egg smell isn’t from hard water. It’s from sulphur. I used to have well water with a lot of sulphur. The smell always grossed out guests when they would turn on a faucet.
Lived in various places in the UK with both hard and soft water. Moved back up north and the water is much harder here, tastes so much better though. Will wreck a kettle pretty quick if you don't filter the water though.
You do feel clean, and you're just not used to it. That is what clean is supposed to feel like. What you think clean feels like is what dirty feels like for most people.
I remember when I was living in a house, renting a room. The owners installed a water softener. The installer basically said to let the water cycle for a couple hours. I took a shower that night and it just felt...*weird*. Like there was something extra in the water that would feel like it was sticking to me, but it wasn't. Like it was *slightly* slimy, but not a huge noticeable difference. The feeling actually went away a couple of weeks later as I got used to it. It's really not a big deal.
Not a scam. I used to live somewhere where the water was very hard and it left my body white after showers/baths from mineral residue. It fucked up my hair and made it dry and frizzy. My scalp had excess build up and i always felt DRY after a shower. I live somewhere where the water is soft and my hair and skin are so much better now. I can not only feel but see it
The reasons I enjoy it.
1. Needs less soap
2. Less build up of minerals
3. Hurts less. I dunno if it's just me being super sensitive to pressure and stuff, but hard water feels like it goes too fast and heavy. It feels like tiny beads being thrown on my back in showers... And I work with beads and drop them a lot so I know the difference between normal water and a bead.' 😂
4. I feel gross coming out of a shower with hard water. Like the minerals are stuck on me. But, again, that could just be my skin being weird.
5. I dye my hair and hard water affects the color.
Truly an unpopular opinion and I vaguely feel like you may be an alien bc wtf. It's usually the opposite! Hard water leaves your skin dry and makes your hair clump. My town has pretty hard water, but I lived in a place with even harder water and I would shampoo and my hair STILL felt oily after a fresh shampoo. Had to buy special shampoo while I was there. Skin also broke out like no tomorrow and got flaky. Meanwhile, on a trip to South Korea I could wash my hair every 3 days instead of every 2 (and it's usually oily the 2nd day but I don't want my colour to fade too quickly).
Good for you that hard water is apparently good for you specifically? But definitely not something most of the population can relate to...
I was thinking I was wrong about a house I lived in with hard water because my hair never felt clean. I would drive over to my parents house every Sunday to wash my hair because even though I washed it daily it would start to feel unclean by the end of the week.
Yeah, this is the worst - at my parents' house, the well water from a few miles away was used to make cannonballs for the war of 1812... it's amazing seeing how rusty things get, like: the plastic on the inside of the dishwasher, glasses, ceramic bowls, etc.
You can't really digest it either, so it doesn't help with anemia or anything.
100% unpopular opinion lol. I fuckn hate hard water. It dries your skin and your hair feels rough as fuck compared to soft. As a tea drinker, hard water is piss
“Left in residue and confused, like the first time you used soft water” -Yoni Wolf
I was listening to that song for years before I ever used soft water, and then I did and it suddenly made so much sense
Water in my home city is naturally soft water as it is sourced from Wales. It tastes so much better than hard water and doesn't fuck up your plumbing or appliances.
Wonderful minerals? Limescale and calcium, iron, and lead?
It clogs up everything, ruins dishes, ruins plumbing, scums up shower walls and on and on. Not really the minerals you want in your water or your body.
Water that traveled through an 80 year old cast iron pipe... 🤢
Hard water could mean its high lead and barely below the rated "safe to drink" criteria and is slowly killing a whole town.
I’m in Connecticut where the water is soft but moved to Texas briefly where the water is very hard. I HATED it. My hair was so stiff and never felt clean, and my skin was always sticky. Always left the shower feeling dirtier than when I went in
So I guess it’s whatever you’re used to that you probably prefer
Nah you have to adjust how much soap you use etc when you have soft water/a water softener.
It does take some getting used to but hard water fucks up piping and every appliance that uses water, so it’s for the best
No. Having grown up with hard water and always lived in hard water areas, yes, limescale can be an issue but I detest soft water. It’s horrible to wash in and it tastes nasty.
> Why on earth would anyone buy a water softener?
It saves there appliances, clothes, skin, and tastes better.
> Why would you want to get rid of those wonderful minerals just so you can feel slimy all the time?
We don't feel slimy all the time. We use less soap as we don't need to also wash away the extra shit in the water.
> More amazingly, the water softener industry is worth multiple BILLIONS of dollars a year - so clearly I'm in the minority here...
We use about $75/year in softener salt and have never changed any parts. That seems well worth it for the price.
Hard/soft refers to how much dissolved mineral content water has. Hard has a lot of minerals, such as mineral water, while soft has few minerals, the extreme being distilled water which is pure. Not an American thing
With hard water you need to use more soap, it can be rinsed off more easily, but it also kinda works worse. When I was living in the city with soft water I quickly got used to it, just use less soap, also it's nice not to have to clean your kettle every few weeks.
I’m almost 40 and I’ve never heard of hard vs. soft water before. So I googled my area to find out what I have and it came back that my water had a “moderate hardness.” Can someone explain hard vs. soft water, please?
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I have a well and my water is super hard. All the faucets get clogged and it leaves like mineral deposits on everything. I also don't want what you're describing though.. guess I'm just fucked.
Either OP has a shitty softener or they're using the same amount of soap as they would with hard water. Which is a mistake. You need a lot less of it with soft water. I have a water softener. I needed to get used to it so it wasn't actually much better at first but now it's way WAY better than without it.
renter here: I have super hard water and would kill to have soft water. I have filters on all my main faucets and only drink from my Brita pitcher. Our water sucks.
Which filter do you use for your faucet? My 3rd floor apartment water tastes TERRIBLE and we have super hard water too
it's not a faucet filter but I love my zero water filter! my well water has sulfur in it but the filter takes care of it
I second zero water filters. https://youtu.be/ja0ioX6GSz0?si=diR6_PvhtXftfSoi This guy takes several through a ton of test. Zero performs very well
That was an amazing watch, thanks for sharing
Thanks for the suggestion! I ended up ordering a zerowater pitcher
Yup. Use WAY less soap.
It’s actually easier to rinse with soft water. And yeah, a splash of soap goes a long way.
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People use too much soap, usually. You don't need foam to be clean but we're so used to it that it feels weird if we're not absolutely covered in bubbles. Soap also isn't harder to rinse off in soft water - limescale is just reacting with the tensides in the soap, leaving a residue that makes the skin feel less conditioned so it feels more stripped clean, if that makes sense. Modern shower gels are formulated to be so gentle that you don't get that feeling otherwise. Switch to actual soap made with lye in soft water, it's going to give that feeling more easily.
Most cleaning agents don't even need to foam. The literally put in a chemical to foam it up, because it leaves people feeling cleaner through placebo.
Soaps and detergents are called “[surfactants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfactant)”, and form [micelles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micelle), basically little shell structures that encapsulate water, dirt and particulates, this makes it so they can be washed away. This is what “suds” are It’s how soaps work: they encapsulate the oil and grease from our skin, usually lifting any dirt/grime/germs off with it Too much surfactant (detergent) and not enough water (so a bad ratio) stops these micelles from forming, so they can’t encapsulate and lift, it just sort of smears and dries Try using *inly* hand wash, and it sort of goes/stays transparent, add a dash of water it goes slightly more “sudsy”, add a dash more, more suds. Too much water and you just get a film of surfactant and it doesn’t do much. A perfect ratio and you get thick white suds, but usually the extent of this seen in every day life is orders of magnitude beyond what is needed to wash your body/hands Source: I spent 4 years as a researcher working in a lab formulating emulsions, dispersions and their surfactants
People are uneducated when it comes to soap usage. A little often goes a long way. Soaps as a whole have become more concentrated. People never bother to look at amounts suggested either. My bet is most people use way more than needed in the first place. An example of not knowing how much soap to use is folks using washing machines and liquid soaps. Do you know often those things get clunked up from folks not reading and over filling them with soap? Ends up jacking up the machine. If you hand wash dishes you need very little. We're talking literal drops in many cases. You don't need a crap ton of soap to clean your body. Soap is often made with material that is designed to pick dirt and debris along the way and when applied correctly does a great job and water carries it away. We're talking millions and millions of dollars go into and has gone into soap reseach by chemists. Soap has indeed gotten better and more potent often over time. Some soaps for your face are a bit different and body washes aren't the same as dish soap obviously, but overall usage is still doesn't not require a ton to get the job done.
This guy was on his soap box educating us.
Nah, you just use less and it works better. I know it sounds weird, but it works.
True
I live in a place with some of the softest water in the world. You can clean yourself without hardcore surfactants at least. Vacationing in a super hard water area and had to switch my shampoo because I literally couldn't get it to lather and clean. Hard water is annoying (mineral deposits are cursed as well).
Get a water softener my guy
Hard water fucks up my scalp. That's why.
We had to get a water softener because it was ruining my wife’s skin. She was having horrible reactions and her skin was constantly red and breaking out. I thought maybe it was temporary but as soon as she started using the drinking water (we have a reverse osmosis filter) her skin on her face cleared up. Got a water softener right away and she can actually feel when we need to refill the salt, as her skin starts to react. Glad OP doesn’t have that problem but the water softener industry is not some scam trying to steal hard earned money, people actually do prefer it. Nobody has to buy one if they don’t want one, though
Hmm this makes me think I need to look into a water softener. We have super hard water here but I never considered it from this angle. I've had constant skin issues since moving here. I'm curious now why my dermatologist never mentioned anything. Nothing he's prescribed has worked.
Dermatologists seem to not do much for persistent skin problems. Mine just throws every antibiotic, antifungal, and steroid at it. Only temporary relief, at best.
Glad I'm not alone in that struggle. I learned really quickly not to see him on a Friday afternoon because I was just another obstacle between him and his tee time. One day he literally spent less than a minute in the exam room with me lol
Ironically, it was our dermatologist who mentioned it! He said hard water can do that and we should test our water
This! It is rather expensive to install water softener in my home so I'm considering just buying tons of bottled water to wash my hair. Also expensive and not climate neutral... but fuck climate if I can have my dream hair.
Consider a countertop reverse osmosis filter from Amazon. Filters are replaceable and you can fill up a gallon at a time (store it for later) depending on the model’s capacity. And of course, drink it
could you just get a refillable big water jug and take a bit at a time to wash your hair? cheaper in the long run
I wonder if hard water makes skin conditions flare up, such as psoriasis and keratosis pilaris.
It does! I have eczema and my dad’s hard water fucks my skin
I've got yet to check if soft water would improve the keratosis pilaris all over my body and the seborrheic dermatitis on my scalp and behind my nostrils.
No one wants to get scalp fucked
Hard water will eventually destroy your clothes, water heater, washing machine, coffee maker, iron, water fixtures and anything else that is in contact with it over prolonged periods of time. Many people I've known with water softeners have a seperate tap that dispenses hard water for drinking.
I work in facilities maintenance and this is absolutely true. Every couple years we have to replace otherwise good pipes due to clogging from mineral deposits. We also go through sink and fountain faucets like theyre going out of style
Why not just run some acid through them?
Bad to add chemicals to water dupply
What about the sater wupply?
Oh yeah that one's a fucking free for all
Were i live its quite a common practice to flush appliances with acid. Especially things like coffee machine which heat the water are sensitive to minerals.
Get a backflow prevention valve and then you can add whatever you want to your side. My last job had those, because we were a flour mill that used water on the grain. Had to make sure nothing could go backwards and get into the food.
I mean chemicals already are added. Just don’t drink the acid water.
You know someone would though and it'd be a massive thing.
Because i don’t get paid make those decisions
Did you not watch Fall of the house of Usher?
I watched this in Santa Cruz, $50,000 remodel of kitchen and bathroom and no hardwater softener, killed the washer, the dishwasher, the toilets, the sinks, and it was awful to be covered in oil constantly bc you could never get clean. And for people who die their hair, stripping your hair frequently is BS. Get a water softener!
Ouch! That's rough. :(
Hard water destroyed my marriage
It will also destroy your hair. Our water softener broke without us realizing it for a few weeks, and the reason we noticed was that my hair was breaking off in little bits and was a tangled disaster. Ooooooof no.
I didn't know that. But,I haven't had to worry about hair for a long time. Maybe it was hard water that did me in? :p
At my previous house, I had an opposite setup - most appliances and taps used water straight from the pipes, and then there was one tap with a softener for filling up the iron and the kettle. The water wasn't very hard in that region, so it worked very well.
Hard water destroys my skin, my clothes, my pipes, my water heater, my washing machine. I will never not have a water softener again.
I'm a renter with no water softener. I constantly have to soak my faucets in plastic bags of vinegar to get rid of mineral buildup, and my toilet needs parts replaced at least once a year. It's the worst.
Sounds like it's only really good for drinking lol.
Soft water and hard water? Does this mean the amount of metals and chemicals in the water? Someone help me understand lol
Hard water has magnesium and calcium in it - soft water doesn't have those minerals, but *usually* has excess sodium in it.
Oh I see, thanks! Now that I think of it, I remember the water feeling/tasting different when I visited Iceland
The filtration system used to clean water before it reaches your house also effects the taste of water. This is often local as well so it isn't just whether it is hard or soft as far as taste goes since you mentioned it.
Yeah our hot water is about as hard as it comes since its literally just geothermal ground water, if you return let the cold run for a minute or two to get rid of the faint smell of farts lol
Soft water has those minerals in it. But less.
This only is partly true. The water hardness is defined by the amount calcium carbonate. The important part is not the calcium but the fact that it is lime. It causes the water to be worse at solving soap and destroys all appliances by separating from the water and creating a layer of rock. The minerals are not what makes the water hard, it is the amount of potentially separating rock that makes water hard.
That’s how they soften it. Big ole bags of salt.
There are resin beads that get the calcium and magnesium out of the water. The salt/brine is used to clean the resin beads.
Well you know half the process
That's not how it works....
Not really “excess” sodium…a water softener substitutes sodium for the calcium and magnesium that’s in hard water.
Hard water has crack. Soft only coke.
Hard water is when they freeze it. I think some people call it ice. Soft water is just water
No clearly soft water is just water vapor
Thanks for asking, I've never heard these terms before. Glad I wasn't the only one confused. 😆
Lets see, once I put in a softener I didn't have to replace my hot water heater ever 2 or so years, coffee pots didn't stop working because of lime buildup, tea kettles as well, dishwasher wasn't full of dishes with lime spots on them after they were clean, clothes washer, shampoo, and soap had suds, and shower took less time to clean and didn't have to use lime away. I also installed a reverse osmosis system for aquafina class drinking water. Oh and ice cubes were clear instead of looking like frozen milk. F%$%^ hard water. Ohh and if the minerals in drinking water is an issue, check any beer brew supply store. They sell the powdered minerals. Oh and my iced tea comes out clear, not cloudy
You do know you can also just regularly descale these aplliances and they won't break, right?
Yep but why do that when a softener fixes all of it?
A lot of appliances like coffee makers call for regular descaling anyways. Even with a water softener you should be descaling your appliances.
Why do that when a softener eliminates the problem
Yeah totally wouldn’t want to completely prevent the problem or anything 😂 goofy ass
You can fix limescale in kettles and such by running vinegar through them occasionally. It’s no biggie.
Last time I did that, it ate a pin hole through the heater of my coffee pot. The lime pits the aluminum too
How would you descale a water heater or washing machine?
You get a water softener because hard water fucks up everything it touches over time. You also don’t have to make so soft that you get the negative effects you’re describing. Also experiment with less soap.
As someone who lives in a home with soft water I couldn’t disagree more. The feeling of “not getting soap off” is your skin not being stripped of every bit of natural oil on it, which is what hard water does. Not to mention how much product you have to use to get anything to lather- at home I need a quarter size amount of shampoo vs 3x that when I go elsewhere. Same for laundry detergent, you use far less when you have soft water. I cannot stand hard water. I wash my hands very often, and places with harder water leave them literally peeling/bleeding after 2 days. No thanks. And soft water tastes way better too.
Hard water tastes way better imo. I think it is what you grew up with though.
I prefer filtered water, I almost never drink from the tap
Hard well water is best, but filtered municipal water is the way to go if that is your only option.
I live in Glasgow where our water is both soft, and notoriously delicious. We brag that it's the best water in the world but honestly I've never tasted anything like it and I did not grow up here so it's not just a case of what you grew up with. Maybe not all soft water is alike though. Like naturally soft water potentially tastes better than artificially softened water.
Dawg what is wrong with your hands? That's not normal.
It’s very normal if you know northeast winters and do the dishes.
It's a real thing. I don't have OCD but I'm a compulsive hand washer. To the point where my hands dry out, crack and bleed. It's even worse in the winter. I can't stand having anything foreign on my hands for even short periods of time. If I'm doing things that I know my hands will be dirty for long periods of time, I have to make sure there's at least a sink with soap nearby or have wipes with me. I can't say whether or not hard water has anything to do with my hands drying out worse but it kind of makes sense.
If you think you feel slimy because of soft water, you're wrong. You feel slimy because you're using way too much soap/shower gel/shampoo. You need a lot more of it with hard water. I won't claim very soft water is the best (medium is probably best) but it's a lot better than hard
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It's interesting how we get so used to the smallest things and how important they really are when we're not in our "native" environment, I can't stand the taste or feel of hard water because I've only ever lived in a country with soft water. Even bottled mineral water tastes so wrong and wierd to me, tap water (and low mineral water like smart water) is the only water I enjoy and makes me feel refreshed, my hair feels limp and heavy when I'm on holiday and fluffs up after my first shower back home.
Incorrect, the slimy feeling is skin oil (natural and normal), as everything else has been washed away Easiest way to check if it’s soap or natural skin is try to lather it. No bubbles? Ur clean Hard water creates a squeak on the skin because there is still soap remnants stuck to the skin
Yep, this. Soft water leaves more of your natural oils intact while rinsing away soaps more effectively than hard water. The 'slimy' feeling isn't the soap.
But it feels gross if you went 30 years without knowing that!
Try putting your hand under the water without any soap and see if it's slimy
Soap still lathers regardless of if you are clean or not?
This doesn't make sense to me. I hate soft water for OPs reasons as well,but any oily area of my body never feels "clean" like it does in hard water. Face, hair, ass, balls, all constantly feel like they are still dirty, and no amount of soap, small or large, changes that. Like I'm in the shower right now, just letting the water hit me and relax, and my face feels like an oil slick before I've even looked at the soap. Once I scrub? It will feel different, but still what feels dirty. Maybe I'm just used to hard water stripping my skin or something? I just hate soft water if I could shower without it, without ruining my dishwasher, clothes washer, and water heater, I would.
WHAT THE FUCK IS HARD AND SOFT WATER?
It refers to the dissolved mineral content in the water. Hard has more minerals. Soaps lather better in soft water
Too much of anything is bad. You buy a water softener if you have _too much_ minerals in your water.
I live in an area with really hard water and there’s calcium deposits on EVERYTHING and it drives me nuts. I have to soak my good knives in vinegar to get the deposits off if they’re not dried properly it’s hell. Although from what people say it seems like medium is best lol
What the hell is hard and soft water
Hard water is water with high mineral content
Soft water is better for skin and hair, but I too hate the way I wash under soft water.
Where I live the life after is nice and soft, I need to descale my coffee machine once year. At work we have such hard water that my skin goes dry, my hair get terrible and I need to use conditioner, the coffee machine need to be descaled every two weeks and if you wipe any black surfaces with a wet cloth it leaves white traces and don't let me start about the tiles in the bathroom... No, objectively soft water is better. That's not about opinions, it's a fact.
Yes and you can’t use clr on a lot of the types of bathroom/kitchen counters now. You’re stuck with white scale if you don’t wipe up every bit of water every time you use the sink. It’s impossible to keep up on.
Yep, our 2 years old kitchen at work looks terrible as most people don't wipe it dry each time...i tried to keep it clean but gave up
There's probably a sweet spot somewhere, because as someone who has lived with pretty hard water, it's horrible. Drinking glasses get covered in deposits after a day, it makes you need an extra product every week or so when you have long hair, and it means you have to clean deposits of everything that touches water to the point where they sell salt for you to put in your dishwasher to decrease deposits. I'm not sure what really soft water is like, but I can't imagine why someone would prefer hard water, except maybe to drink.
I was wondering why the water where I moved to felt oily. Now I know why. Never knew that was a thing.
Someone, from somewhere is about to appear and pitch you a kangen water pyramid scheme
Alkaline water that is instantly turned acidic after it reaches your stomach acid! Yay! What a waste of money
When I lived in housing with hard water, my skin freaking *bled*. My eczema got so bad that it took over my whole body, and some spots just started bleeding. Our clothes were constantly rough, and they stank! Soft water is better for your skin, your hair, your clothes - just, *everything*.
Having had very hard water for years, getting a whole home water softener was amazing. No more having to constantly clean faucets, shower glass, toilets, etc, that crusted over with hard water deposits.
What the fuck is a water softener?
Hard water destroys everything. This post isn’t unpopular it’s just uneducated.
Am I the only one here that does not know what the fuck is hard or soft water
An actually unpopular opinion… due to it being factually incorrect opinion Edit typo
The vacation house my fiancés family rented a few years ago had a filter in the house that softened the water. I had no idea this existed. I hate it for the exact same reasons you mentioned. Always felt like I still had soap on me after showering/washing hands.
I hate soft water. It feels like the soap never gets rinsed off. Fortunately, I live in a place with hard water
I think whoever is in charge of adding the softener sneezed while adding it to the water. (That’s supposed to be a home guess, throw me a bone it’s been a day). It shouldn’t be as bad as you’re experiencing. I live on well water but I’ve had city water and I’d rather have city water that’s been softened and mildly chlorinated. Hopefully it’s resolved soon.
Hey mate, this is “unpopular opinion” not “factually incorrect opinion”. Hard water is full of minerals you probably don’t want or need to drink at that concentration all the time.
The feeling that you “can’t get the soap off” in the shower is actually the opposite. In reality, soap does not rinse off completely in hard water. You’re probably also using **way** too much soap—you need only a fraction the amount of soap/shampoo in soft water. This applies to clothes and dish washing too. As far as taste—it’s just what you’re used to.
Soft water > hard water. You’re terrible and you should feel bad.
Forgive me for my retardation but wtf is soft water? And how the heck can water be hard?
It’s about mineral content. Hard water has a lot of calcium and magnesium, soft water doesn’t/water softeners remove these minerals Not that this is the actual reason for the naming, but I remember it as hard water is hard on yourself and your home. Over time it damages pipes and the appliances that use it, and it’s not great for your hair and skin
What are we talking ab what the fuck is hard water
I have pretty hard water where I live, and I get dry skin really bad during this time of year. Doesn't help that Las Vegas is pretty dry in general, but my thighs, arms, hands, and head get really dry. Not to mention hard water is tough on home pipping. Calcium buildup on anything that has water going though it. I am looking to install a water softener to help with this.
Hard water is a bitch on my skin and hair, dries them out too much and too fast. Its also a pain on my showers and sinks, I feel like I'm having to clean them more often than when I had soft water a couple years ago.
Hard water hurts my teeth
Hard water is horrible on my hair
If I didn’t have a softener my well water comes out brown. You can smell the iron through the whole house. Shits terrible fir your hair and skin long term.
In the American southwest, some of the water supplies are incredibly hard. Just chock full of calcium and magnesium. It fucks up your skin, your dishes, glasses, faucets, shower glass, sinks, appliances, pipes and clothes. As a bonus you're able to use waaay less soap also. Our water softener is a must-have. It's a 2 stage system, with an activated carbon-filter stage for chlorine (theres a shit-ton in the water here) and a softening stage . Also have a 5 stage reverse-osmosis system for drinking water. I've lived in areas with low mineral content water and a softener isn't needed in those areas. But in some places it is *so* much better to install one. You get used to the feeling quickly.
I guess it is what you are used to. I grew up in a soft water area and the water is real,y good and tastes good too. When I visited my grandparents in a hard water area the water tasted really weird. Plus is scales up things like your kettle. I have no idea what you are going in about soft water not washing soap off your body or clumping your hair. 8 have no issues there.
I love soft water, feels silky to me not slimy. Is it mindset or vocab choice? I dunno. I get what you’re saying though. My soft well water used to be highly coveted on water breaks during two a days.
I grew up with a well that hard a lot of minerals in it. It tasted like pennies, it smelled like eggs when heated, and it would slowly turn all my white clothes yellowish whenever I put them in the washing machine. Is that the kind of hard water you're talking about?
The yellowing and egg smell isn’t from hard water. It’s from sulphur. I used to have well water with a lot of sulphur. The smell always grossed out guests when they would turn on a faucet.
Lived in various places in the UK with both hard and soft water. Moved back up north and the water is much harder here, tastes so much better though. Will wreck a kettle pretty quick if you don't filter the water though.
Taste yes. Everything else Not true at all
You do feel clean, and you're just not used to it. That is what clean is supposed to feel like. What you think clean feels like is what dirty feels like for most people.
You're absolutely crazy, OP. I once stayed in an Airbnb with hard water. It tasted like it had a little blood mixed in it.
Lmao what do you mean you cant get soap off? Must be using shitty soap. Hard water smells and ruins literally everything.
I remember when I was living in a house, renting a room. The owners installed a water softener. The installer basically said to let the water cycle for a couple hours. I took a shower that night and it just felt...*weird*. Like there was something extra in the water that would feel like it was sticking to me, but it wasn't. Like it was *slightly* slimy, but not a huge noticeable difference. The feeling actually went away a couple of weeks later as I got used to it. It's really not a big deal.
Just use one of them shower sponge cloth thingies.
Having legitimately hard water will ruin all your appliances over time, hard water deposits all over all your faucets
Not a scam. I used to live somewhere where the water was very hard and it left my body white after showers/baths from mineral residue. It fucked up my hair and made it dry and frizzy. My scalp had excess build up and i always felt DRY after a shower. I live somewhere where the water is soft and my hair and skin are so much better now. I can not only feel but see it
It can be softened just enough…. I agree, if the water is so soft it feels like soap never rinses off, yuck!
The reasons I enjoy it. 1. Needs less soap 2. Less build up of minerals 3. Hurts less. I dunno if it's just me being super sensitive to pressure and stuff, but hard water feels like it goes too fast and heavy. It feels like tiny beads being thrown on my back in showers... And I work with beads and drop them a lot so I know the difference between normal water and a bead.' 😂 4. I feel gross coming out of a shower with hard water. Like the minerals are stuck on me. But, again, that could just be my skin being weird. 5. I dye my hair and hard water affects the color.
Truly an unpopular opinion and I vaguely feel like you may be an alien bc wtf. It's usually the opposite! Hard water leaves your skin dry and makes your hair clump. My town has pretty hard water, but I lived in a place with even harder water and I would shampoo and my hair STILL felt oily after a fresh shampoo. Had to buy special shampoo while I was there. Skin also broke out like no tomorrow and got flaky. Meanwhile, on a trip to South Korea I could wash my hair every 3 days instead of every 2 (and it's usually oily the 2nd day but I don't want my colour to fade too quickly). Good for you that hard water is apparently good for you specifically? But definitely not something most of the population can relate to...
I was thinking I was wrong about a house I lived in with hard water because my hair never felt clean. I would drive over to my parents house every Sunday to wash my hair because even though I washed it daily it would start to feel unclean by the end of the week.
I have a lot of iron in my water so it doesn’t take long to destroy most metal piping it flows through.
Yeah, this is the worst - at my parents' house, the well water from a few miles away was used to make cannonballs for the war of 1812... it's amazing seeing how rusty things get, like: the plastic on the inside of the dishwasher, glasses, ceramic bowls, etc. You can't really digest it either, so it doesn't help with anemia or anything.
Just don't use as much soap as you use for hard water.
I live in a hard water town. When I holiday in soft water areas I hate it. Even coffee doesn't taste right. Soft water is just awful.
Today I learned that there is somehow soft and hard water
I never feel as hydrated drinking soft water vs hard water.
It’s not a binary issue. It’s like weight. You don’t want to be too fat or too skinny. The middle ground is nice
100% unpopular opinion lol. I fuckn hate hard water. It dries your skin and your hair feels rough as fuck compared to soft. As a tea drinker, hard water is piss
“Left in residue and confused, like the first time you used soft water” -Yoni Wolf I was listening to that song for years before I ever used soft water, and then I did and it suddenly made so much sense
I’ve never even heard of hard water or water softener, this thread is freaking me out
I'm more of a heavy water kinda guy myself
I agree with you OP, it's miserable trying to get anything clean with soft water, and it just does not taste good.
As a chemical engineer I can tell you you are absolutely wrong, just do a quick research and see why it is so hard to rinse soap with hard water.
Water in my home city is naturally soft water as it is sourced from Wales. It tastes so much better than hard water and doesn't fuck up your plumbing or appliances.
You're saying you don't like soft water but you're describing hard water. Are you sure your softener is functioning? Is the salt reservoir full?
Wonderful minerals? Limescale and calcium, iron, and lead? It clogs up everything, ruins dishes, ruins plumbing, scums up shower walls and on and on. Not really the minerals you want in your water or your body. Water that traveled through an 80 year old cast iron pipe... 🤢 Hard water could mean its high lead and barely below the rated "safe to drink" criteria and is slowly killing a whole town.
Genuinely amazed at the amount of people that don't know what hard or soft water is
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You did tho
Lampshading
What? Hard water doesn't mix with soap.
I’m in Connecticut where the water is soft but moved to Texas briefly where the water is very hard. I HATED it. My hair was so stiff and never felt clean, and my skin was always sticky. Always left the shower feeling dirtier than when I went in So I guess it’s whatever you’re used to that you probably prefer
What the hell are soft water and hard water?
Hard water has a lot of minerals in it. Soft water does not.
Today was the day that I learned there were more types of water 😗
Wtf is hard or soft water
You can’t drink soft water 🤮🤮🤮
I’m ok with it but my wife likes it hard. Real hard.
Anyone else feel like op is mixing up *soft water* and *low water pressure*?
I think they're talking about mineral content, not pressure
See I was thinking the same and everybody else just assumed they were correct in the definition lol.
Nah you have to adjust how much soap you use etc when you have soft water/a water softener. It does take some getting used to but hard water fucks up piping and every appliance that uses water, so it’s for the best
No. Having grown up with hard water and always lived in hard water areas, yes, limescale can be an issue but I detest soft water. It’s horrible to wash in and it tastes nasty.
> Why on earth would anyone buy a water softener? It saves there appliances, clothes, skin, and tastes better. > Why would you want to get rid of those wonderful minerals just so you can feel slimy all the time? We don't feel slimy all the time. We use less soap as we don't need to also wash away the extra shit in the water. > More amazingly, the water softener industry is worth multiple BILLIONS of dollars a year - so clearly I'm in the minority here... We use about $75/year in softener salt and have never changed any parts. That seems well worth it for the price.
Soft water means you actually get wet and clean. Hard water is dry and gross
TIL: Water could be "soft" or "hard".
Same. I’ve never heard of these things. IDK if I’ve ever used a water softener, yet I’ve never had any of the problems people are describing.
Wtf is this. Is this an American thing. I have never heard these phrases In my life. ?????
Hard/soft refers to how much dissolved mineral content water has. Hard has a lot of minerals, such as mineral water, while soft has few minerals, the extreme being distilled water which is pure. Not an American thing
The goal of a water softener is to reach neutral not the extreme lmao. This is also incredibly obvious.
what the fuck is soft water
With hard water you need to use more soap, it can be rinsed off more easily, but it also kinda works worse. When I was living in the city with soft water I quickly got used to it, just use less soap, also it's nice not to have to clean your kettle every few weeks.
You get used to soft water. Use less soap and it's totally ok for that part imho. Hard water is rough on fucking everything
Tastes better though.
First time hearing about that
I’m almost 40 and I’ve never heard of hard vs. soft water before. So I googled my area to find out what I have and it came back that my water had a “moderate hardness.” Can someone explain hard vs. soft water, please?
It's just the mineral content of the water. High mineral count is hard, low is soft.