If you live in an area with hard water, it probably seems like common sense to have a water softening system in your home. Nobody wants spotty dishes, bathtub rings, or dull hair! But the ol’ tried-and-true water softener has a few nasty secrets. If you look at the real cost of softened water and the challenges it creates for water management, water conservation, and the environment, you might think a little differently about how you soften your water.
What’s the difference between hard water and softened water?
Water described as “hard” has a higher mineral content – usually calcium and magnesium – than ordinary water. As more and more calcium and magnesium dissolve in the water the harder the water gets. The high mineral content makes soap less effective. Soft water has little or no dissolved minerals, which is why you need less shampoo and soap if you soften your water.
How do you soften water?
Typical home water softeners remove calcium and magnesium from hard water by exchanging their ions for sodium or potassium. Removing the minerals makes chores easier and can make your water appliances (washing machine, dishwasher, etc.) last longer.
What are the potential problems of salt-softened water?
1) Soft water kills your plants
If you use softened water on your house plants and your landscape, over time the salt will build up in the soil and cause your plants to die of thirst. If you live in an area that doesn’t get much rainfall, the salt will not get washed out or percolate deep enough into the soil to be diluted. High concentration of salt in soil decreases oxygen levels, causes the soil to swell and become compacted. When this happens, plants cannot get enough nutrients to their roots and they die.
Two ways to tell if your plants, trees, and grass have salt stress is if they have yellow tips on their leaves or have salt rings where the water sits as it soaks into the soil. Yellow tips will be less obvious on grass because you cut off the tips every time you mow.
2) Soft water poisons soil
Salt is washed into your city’s wastewater through normal activities like showers, using the toilet and washing clothes. So even if you don’t use softened water on your own landscape, your softened water ends up in your city’s water source and is likely used to irrigate parks and agriculture. The longer an area is watered with salt-treated water, the more the soil in that area gets compacted and loses vital nutrients. Over time the high salt concentration will not only kill existing plants but also prevent new plants from growing in the poisoned soil.
3) Soft water harms the environment
In cities where water softeners are allowed, the waste water must be treated for high salt content and there is an issue of where to discharge the salt when it comes out of the water. In places like California sometimes it’s discharged into the ocean which is expensive and can have long term effects on the aquatic environment. In other places, treated waste water is usually added to the local water source which may be a stream or lake and it will have the same detrimental effect on the fish and plants there.
4) Water softeners are water wasters!
Salt-based water softeners have some convenient benefits, sure, but they are sneaky water wasters. Advocates say you’ll save money on detergents and appliance replacements, but you will use more water with a water softener than without. Why?
First of all, because compacted soil does not absorb enough water and will runoff faster than porous soil. You will need to water more often to get the same result. Also, you have to leach the salt out of your soil to avoid killing all of your plants – and that means regularly flooding soil with enough water to push all of the salt down deeper to dilute it or flush it to the surface and away. (Again, it has to go somewhere. Your lawn may be safe but you may be involuntarily poisoning the park down the street.) While this method is effective at washing away the salt, it also washes essential nutrients out of the soil which you will have to replace with soil amendments.
Softened water isn’t recommended for drinking so many people purchase a reverse osmosis unit which wastes at least a gallon of water for every gallon it produces.
So what can you do?
There are some excellent alternatives to using salt to soften water.
First, if you use a salt-based water softener and don’t want to change, I suggest at a minimum you connect the salt water softener to your hot water line only. This way you’ll have soft water for showers and washing clothes, but for all your cold water uses like watering plants and drinking you won’t have to worry about high sodium content. This also dramatically reduces the amount of salt water being washed away down your drains.
Arizona State University completed a study in 2011 and discovered the most promising technology for softening water without salt is the template assisted crystallization process. It tested four types of water softener not using salt: capacitive deionization, electrically induced precipitation, template assisted crystallization, and electromagnetic water treatment. You can read about the study here.
In the Santa Clarita Valley of California an ordinance was passed prohibiting the use of automatic or self regenerating water softeners. But the prohibition doesn’t mean nasty hard water for all their residents. The city offers a large variety of options for softening water without using salt. You can find information here about these alternative products.
Have you experienced a buildup of salt in your soil and wondered what is causing it? Do you know any other solutions that I didn’t mention? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment below or send us a message on our Facebook page: Water Bloggers. You can also learn more about water softening hazards and participate in the discussion on Ground Chat today on Twitter at 2pm ET. Just search the hashtag #groundchat to join in!
Ooo…I’m sure glad we didn’t install a water softener on Westwinds when we had a high mineral content!
I’ve always known that I could learn A LOT from my “kids!” Thanks for putting this incredible information together in a format that didn’t salt my brain cells.
Mom (LiteracyandTech) a water softener sure could have improved that awful well water, but we did just fine without one. That’s why you have so many big strong sons; to scrub the mineral rings out of the bath tub!
This article makes it very clear that softened water should not be used OUTSIDE of the home for various reasons. Agreed, outside spigots should be bypassed. However, it is written in a manner to mislead the reader into thinking softeners are the enemy and anti-scaling devices are the ultimate solution. I would like to point out that to protect property from ALL negative aspects of hardness, you need to actually remove hardness. The article does not mention that template assisted crystallization and some other anti-scaling technologies do NOT remove hardness. Furthermore, the article does not mention that product certification standards to validate performance of these devices will not be complete until later this year leaving it up to consumers to base buying decisions on potentially biased company data. It mentions the ASU study to support performance, but leaves out the detail that the study only reflects performance on gas fired water heaters, but does not address worst performance with electric type water heaters (40-60% of the US market and increasing). Lastly, the article does not mention that some anti-scaling products have severe limitations with specific water qualities. For these reasons, homeowners should understand that anti-scaling technologies may not be the ultimate answer today, but that the water treatment industry is working on performance standards and other tools to help innovative technologies become solutions in the future.
In regards to the comment “Softened water isn’t recommended for drinking so many people purchase a reverse osmosis unit which wastes at least a gallon of water for every gallon it produces,” it needs to be noted that softened water is fine for drinking and cooking. It would be more accurate to state that many people purchase a reverse osmosis (RO) unit to improve the taste or remove other contaminants that may be in their water. Many RO systems do waste water to produce good quality water; however, there are RO units that recycle the water through the hot service lines or other methods of reclamation.
Pauli, thanks for your comments here and on LinkedIn, and for your professional advice. As you say, the water treatment industry is always advancing, making improvements in treatment technology all the time. It’s impressive.
In my research, the majority of sources state that salt-softened water is not recommended for drinking, for a variety of reasons. Not just because it tastes bad. I wonder if this is something that the industry disagrees on or if salt water quality is a popular misconception.
Depending on the level of hardness in your water, a softener would typically add an amount of sodium to 2 liters of water (average daily consumption) that is less than or equal to what is present in one cup of milk (122 mg), 2 slices of bread (200 mg), a baked potato (270 mg), or the tuna salad I plan to eat for lunch (320 mg). For this reason, it is shown NOT to be a significant source of sodium and calling softened water “salt water” is inaccurate. If you are in the limited population that are on a severely restricted sodium diet and every milligram counts, then potassium can be used for the softener in place of sodium.
I agree with Pauli. The article is misleading and appears (to me) to be written by the propagandists from certain well-known special interest groups. First of all, the statements that emphasize salt effects upon plant health infer that people use salt brine to water plants, something that no one in their right mind would do! Furthermore, people who own and use water softeners know that softened water should also not be used to irrigate, so that, too, is another ‘straw man’ set up to scare people about softeners, in my opinion.
I was going to also respond to the article’s references to ASU research and other ‘salt-free’ technologies, but Pauli’s statements did that for me quite clearly as follows: “I would like to point out that to protect property from ALL negative aspects of hardness, you need to actually remove hardness. The article does not mention that template assisted crystallization and some other anti-scaling technologies do NOT remove hardness.”
By citing research done at ASU, the article’s author fails to note that alternative ‘salt-free’ technologies developed there and elsewhere (UK, Germany, and others) are useful for scale reduction, but scale reduction happens to be only one of the several reasons consumers install home water softeners. The reason softeners are installed by many consumers is for the ‘comfort’ of showering and, when compared with the problems associated with hard water, the reduced need for soap, detergents, etc. when washing clothes or other items. In particular, the ASU study authors have already stated that the technologies they investigated were applicable to scale-reduction, NOT to water softening in the traditional sense as the consumer expects.
The article goes on to claim that softeners ‘waste water’. Yet, I see no evidence that anyone has measured the amount of such ‘waste’ and balanced it against the reduced amount of water needed for hygienic tasks and the ancillary benefits of softener use. Obviously, softeners are usually regenerated using potable water and the resulting brine is discharged to the sewer or some other receptacle. However, the reduction of water use inside the home plus the convenience and other benefits experienced by the residents, in my opinion, far outweigh the effects of an occasional brine discharge. Others (like the authors), of course, disagree.
The key to reducing water use and salt brine discharges with this type of water treatment system is to develop a set of high-efficiency specifications that identify and qualify the ‘best of the best’ softening systems that are the most water-efficient and salt-efficient. That definitely can be done and we hope that such a specification is available very soon.
Just to clarify, I have no financial or other business interest in the industry or the companies engaged in either producing or selling softener systems.
> To take this another step further to look at the benefits of softened water coming from a water- and salt-efficient system, listen to Pauli Undesser discuss the effects upon laundry and dishwashing (2 minutes):
https://www.watertechonline.com/articles/166136-video-of-the-week-undesser-of-wqa-discusses-benefits-of-softened-water
What I get from this article is that I shouldn’t water my plants with softened water. Which has been known since softened water was a thing. What this article doesn’t tell me is why softening my in home water is bad if I’m bypassing all of my irrigation lines. If my wastewater really gets piped back in to irrigate other things, then perhaps the municipalities in hard water areas should properly treat their wastewater to account for this, rather than have me foot the high cost for appliance replacement and hard water stain cleaning.
Entirely agree with you, Fred! Thank you for making the obvious statement. But, we already know that the original article was authored by the few advocates of water softener prohibitions and only presents their one point of view. Not an objective piece at all.
A water softener is a great idea in many cases… Anyone who lives in the Midwest where the water is liquid concrete will know that it does not take long for buildup to cause backups in pipes. Good point-out on the houseplants, and this especially goes for AQUARIUMS. If you have aquariums and water softeners, you should just quit the hobby.
I came here and saw “hidden risks of water softeners”, sure there are some problems with them, but after my basement flooded because my pipes clogged up like a McDonald’s addict’s veins, I added a water softener and couldn’t be happier.
Hello, I am in South Dakota. We have our own well – our water problem is that without a water softener, everything – clothes, tub, sink, toilet bowl, cooking utensils – all turn yellow or even orange. Right now, we have a standard water softener from Culligan. I’m willing to by-pass some of the softness but don’t really want to have yellow bath water or have my white clothes with streaks of gold. What is a good solution?
Martha, I’m somewhat confused…the salt brine that is used to refresh a resin bed in a water softener normally goes down the drain and the rinse cycle washes away salt before it goes into your house water supply….is there another type of water softener that puts salt into the water supply?
Just as those who have left comments re: this article say that it is written by certain “special interest” groups and is inaccurate in it’s statements – I would say the same about the responses, that they are from those in the “traditional” salt-based systems business. I am in the water treatment industry in Southern Mi. and we have everything in our water from arsenic to methane gas, sulpher as well as high iron content and hardness from almost 0gpg to 60gpg. I have the entire ASU study and refer to it quite frequently. It’s goal was to compare ALTERNATIVE methods of water treatment which it did, finding TAC to be far superior to the other methods tested. As far as comparing TAC systems to water softeners, there is much more to discuss than can be done in this forum. I utilize both types of water treatment as there are situations whereone may be preferred over the other. However, let me ask 2 questions – 1st – technology has advanced so much over the last 100 years (to our benefit) I mean would you go to the dentist or doctor and ask to be treated with the tools and medications available in 1914? absolutely not! So why do we want to treat our water issues with 1914 methodology? They haven’t REALLY changed so much. My 2nd question is this – If a salt-based system doesn’t put sodium of any real amount into the drinking/cooking/bathing water (according to sales reps for national co.) and doesn’t discharge a significant amount of sodium into the septic system (or sewer system), where does the the 4 bags of salt go every month? We are told to back off on the salt shaker on the dinner table for health reasons, but we have 300 lbs of salt in a barrel in the basement? Why are water softeners being banned in cities and townships across this country (MI. has the most at this time) Why is the DEQ handing out fines for excess salinity to so many treatment plants? I would be happy to discuss this at length with anyone who has serious interest (even if we agree to disagree) feel free to contact me at . Thank you
I’m a homeowner looking for a scale reduction system and its comments like Paul’s that are misleading. Most homeowners like me are worried mostly about scaling and damage to boilers. But this drumbeat that no-salt solutions “don’t work” blanket statements make it very hard for someone like me to get a proper picture of a cost-effective solution. Thanks for publishing this study – now it gives me more confidence that an electromagnetic solution does indeed work for my limited needs.
I have been in the water improvement industry for 40 years and I stay up with all technologies. Your misinformation about “salt” leads people to believe that they have sodium chloride in their water as a result of softening (actually sodium bi-carbonate). The amount of sodium in softened water is extremely low especially when you look at the amount sodium that is in food. Soft water can be detrimental to very few and not all plants. Stating that soft water “poisons” soil is a misuse of the term. People use less water for cleaning when they have soft water so to say that water softeners are water wasters is grossly inaccurate. Advising people to only soften their hot water is bad advise. Thank you for this forum to set the record straight for the consumer.
I am so glad I looked up and read your article. I knew it was not good to drink soft water because of the salt content. We didn’t realize how dangerous it was until we saw our shrubs dying and our house plants turning yellow.
We don’t want to drink the city water but we don’t want to drink the soft water either.
Thanks again for your article.
Thank you, Dan! I agree with you on the points you have made. The ‘straw men’ set up by some commenters is leading readers astray in many cases.
As an active water efficiency professional, however, my biggest issue is with the false claims that by eliminating traditional water softeners in homes, water would be saved. There is absolutely NO ‘real world’ proof of such (such as would result from independent studies of a statistically reliable sample of homes with water softeners, accompanied by an equivalent control group without softeners). This myth of ‘savings’ seems to be convincing on its face (after all, no ‘wasteful recharging’), but fails to recognize the savings that Dan briefly mentions as well as other resultant savings in the home. Let’s get the facts first and THEN make choices and recommendations!
And, by the way, TAC is a water treatment device, but is NOT a water softener. Instead, it is a scale reduction or scale prevention device and apparently the ASU work shows it to be quite effective for that purpose. So, let’s not even consider TAC as a fully legitimate alternative for every consumer.
Finally,
a concerned researcher, great information on salt-free systems.
Thank you for your article, you provide some very good points about soft water. You asked for any other solutions in your article. I would like to let you about the H2o Concepts International water conditioning system. The H2o Concepts system with Amp Force™ is a U.S. Patented, Proven, Environmentally Friendly and Certified system to address hard water issues. H2o Concepts system provides whole house water treatment. You will experience healthier water for your skin and hair and our system is the most advanced system on the market. The system leaves in vital Calcium and Magnesium and H2o Concepts water is alkaline (non-Acidic). The but best part about the system is that it DOES NOT use Salt or Potassium Chloride and NO brine discharge is generated. To find out more about H2o Concepts, please visit https://www.h2oconcepts.com
Thank you,
Clearly you know your subject matter. Regarding your statement ‘in cities where water softeners are allowed’ please provide a list of one or more, town, city, municipality or state where legislation exists that makes a water softeners are illegal and/or through some other dictate, edict, mandate and / or by rule of law. Thank you.
What research has been done on the TAC substrates compound affect on PEOPLE? I have small children and wonder what ingesting this medium/additive might lead to. Any help you can provide is appreciated.
Most interesting reporting! Living W. Central AZ, we face looming water problems, future. Swamp cooling exclusively a real nasty problem. Resisting sodium softened conditioning, have none presently. Considering solar distillation on a fairly large home scale. What do you think of that?
This makes so so much sense. I just moved onto an acreage & I watered the roses in the front yard, & noticed they were dying the very next day! Most of the flowers were all crinkled up & I thought poo! What on earth could have caused that? Well thank you for this information! I’m going to see if my husband can hook up the water softener to only the hot water!
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I have been in the water industry for a little over 20 years now. I unfortunately have to disagree with a lot of the statements made here by the author. The one I do agree with is that it does pose a problem for the water treatment centers. However they are able to overcome it. When it comes to lawn and gardening, granted I by no means have a green thumb but I do understand water treatment and water. Watering your lawns and gardens with softened water is actually fine depending on the level of hardness you have in your area. Now typically in a house with 10 grains of hardness your leftover residual sodium left behind in the water lines in a whole is only 80mg per regeneration. Oddly enough even an average slice of bread has 3 times that amount. 80mg of sodium is very little and would take many years to do damage at that rate. Now most often there are homes that bypass the water softener during the watering phase when they don’t have the plumbing set up to already bypass the home to the sprinkler system or hosebibs. It really only takes a few seconds to bypass your softener to water your lawn and garden then let the water re enter the home via the water treatment system again. Yes the softeners do waste some water. This is necessary to remove the hard water from the system so that it can then again soften the homes water. The damage from hard water in most cases over ones life span is more costly to deal with than when having a water softener. Typically over its lifetime it will save you on average up to $25,000 over its life if not more depending on the situation. Hot water tanks, diswashers, washing machines all last a very long time with a water treatment system. These are typically not cheap to replace and usually are replaced every 10 years with hard water. Imagine only replacing these one time. Not to mention the benefits of not using so much soaps and harsh chemical cleaners that go down the drain into our water treatment centers which is a part of the reason we need these softeners. Next to awesome benefits of having silky smooth skin, fuller undamaged hair, and ease of cleaning, your plumbing is now also protected. Water softeners are not a luxury item, rather a lifestyle. They say that you care about your health, your home and your environment as well. A huge benefit to these water treatment systems are the Reverse Osmosis systems. These drinking and cooking water purification systems are designed to promote healthier lifestyles. Not to mention help reduce the carbon footprint that you leave behind. Plastic bottle waste is a very very serious issue right now. If you all have extra time, and we all do please read up on or watch on you tube about The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I do know according to scientists and a vast number of studies that if we do not curb our plastic waste now and continue doing what we do, our world literally will have piles of plastic dump sites all over it we are not meant to have this issue. Yes plastic bottles are of ease and convenience however create a very nasty problem for all of us. So please do yourself a favor and purchase a Reverse Osmosis system with reusable aluminum or stainless steel drinking containers or glass for that matter. Those have very high recyclable rates. Sorry, back to the softener issue on lawns and gardens. In essence if you do not have a high level of hardness you will be fine to use a softener to water lawns and gardens. If you do have a high level of hardness say above 15 grains per gallon then it is recommended to use potassium. Potassium is much more costly than sodium is however will protect your lawns, gardens and plant life from dying off in these cases. At this point most peoples homes usually have separate dedicated lines. If you are truly worried about the sodium aspect then switch to potassium as it is safer. Usually 4 bags a year for a typical household of 4 is what you need. You can get salt pellets for about $5 a bag depending where you live and potassium is about $25 a bag. Your annual salt/potassium cost will be between $20-$100 depending on how many people are in the home and how much your water consumption is. Do not let stories like this stop you from taking care of your home and health. I am in most cases not in your area and have no attachment to any of you. So I do not say this in a sales aspect, rather in brute honesty. I personally would never not have a water treatment system for my home, this is also how I was raised and became a plumber as well. One key tip is to know your approximate regeneration schedule on your system as this also helps to let you know when you should or should water your lawns. It is not recommended to do this during your day of regeneration, yet if necessary run about 50-100 gallons of water in the home afterwards, like everyone take showers, do laundry etc… to reduce the amount of sodium going into your lawns and gardens. Or during high watering months in the summer, just put your system in bypass and let your water do its thing until the watering is done, then let it go through the softener again. I will say if you are going to get a system get one from Rain Soft, they are a bit more expensive than your box store systems however you benefit from getting a lifetime warranty head to toe on your entire system from Rain Soft. No other company out there does that. Your box store products are usually 1-5 years in life span and will need to be repeatedly replaced as they are not of good quality. Literally a Rain Soft EC4, EC5 model will be the last system you have to buy period. The EC5 is the newest model out and has wireless capabilities that also has an app that allows you to be notified when your salt/potassium levels are low, when the system needs service or maintenance and allows you to make an appointment on the app. Either way that you go from here, I hope you are at least educated better and can make a better & more informed decision about using one of these systems for your home. At the very least get a Reverse Osmosis drinking & cooking water system. Come learn more about our passion at cleanwaternm.com and join cause and be part of the change.
Dwayne
My potassium water softener in our last home didn’t kill any of our plants. My sprinklers were set to run for only three minutes at a time instead of the five minutes that Southern Nevada Water Authority recommends and my lawn grew very well! We don’t have a water softener yet in our current home and I can’t get grass to grow to save my life, or our desert tortoise’s!
Our current house is twice the size of the old one, and our water bill is only $40 more per year.
In addition, our water heater in the last house was ten years old when we moved out (and still working). The water heater that I had to replace two weeks ago in our current home was installed six years ago. At $700-800 for a water heater, the savings in appliance replacement is a pretty significant incentive to get a softener into this house ASAP!
What about those of us who have Radium 226 and 228 in our water (I.e. All of Northwest Illinois)? Since the best answers of filtering Radium out I have found online have lead me to salt-based water softening, what alternative would you suggest?
I just moved to Boerne Texas and we use well water that it treated with salt.So is it safe for my family of eight to drink daily?
what is this trying to say? no info about it…. just boring! 🙁 :-(:-(:-(
I live in rural Central Texas, on 30 acres with Well Water. I have the opposite problem…I don’t like my “soft water”! It’s fine for everything except…rinsing my hair, hair is too soft,discoloring my hair color and does not wash/clean laundry as good! So…the biggest problem….what can I do to my “Master Shower” so I have better “hair-do days!!! My daughter is a Hair Stylist and she keeps telling me I can do something about the Soft Water!! HELP, Problem Solver?
[…] dissolved in the water is what imparts a taste to the water, which some people like. According to an article on the risks of softened water there are some other more serious problems of using softened water. Soft water has a high sodium […]
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Pauli, thanks for your comments here and on LinkedIn, and for your professional advice. As you say, the water treatment industry is always advancing, making improvements in treatment technology all the time. It’s impressive. And thanks for this post.
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We are using a TON of water since we moved into a home with a water softener. I spend 15 minutes trying to rinse shampoo and conditioner out of my hair. The only thing that is cutting down on water waste is that my husband and I can’t stand to bathe anymore and do it less–not a positive in my mind. Taking a bath used to be a pleasant experience. Now the garden tub is so slick from the slimy water, we have to be extremely careful not to slip. I am afraid to have guests use the tub for fear they will have an accident. Even in the shower, the floor is slick from that disgusting slimy water.
Thank you so much for this article. Now I understand why the landscaping has yellowing tips, including our beautiful palm tree and our magnolia tree. I wondered what to do for them. And my hair and skin are becoming dry–in a humid climate! Now I understand that one also.
My husband just disconnected that horrible machine. Can’t wait for the slime water to run through. Thank you so much.
Here is the best of all. I just checked our city’s website. The municipal water is already SOFT. Someone sold a bill of goods to the people from whom we bought our house.
Again, thank you, thank you, thank you.