Soft water
Let your house be free form limescale
Soft water
Let your house be free form limescale
Opens 09:00 - 17:00 - Monday to Thursday. -16:00 Friday
Salt Collection Box (Preorder required) - 07:00-19:00 Monday to Saturday.
Hardness Testing Your Water
In short: We recommend three ways of testing water hardness: a small test kit; a TDS meter; or Hach Hardness Test kit. Each individually should tell you whether your water is hard or not.
To check whether it's your softener or other plumbing causing the problem, it may be worth testing your water to find its hardness (measured in parts per million (ppm)). Well, how do I know if my water is hard? Dorset, and surrounding regions, have a base hardness of 250+ ppm, which indicates hard water. This is full of unwanted minerals, like chalk, limestone (becoming limescale in the home), and clay. There are multiple ways we recommend you test your water:
1. Water Hardness Test Kit
Simply add one of the testing tablets into the provided tube with ~20ml of your home's tap water, and shake until the tablet dissolves.
If the water turns red, your water is hard;
if the water turns green, your water is soft.
Notably this will not tell you the exact hardness of your water, but it remains one of the easiest and cheapest methods. You can purchase water hardness test kits from us for a low price, and each kit contains twenty tests, so you won't need to have extra worries about hidden costs when servicing your water softener! Buy here at our shop: Test Kits
2. Use A TDS Meter
A Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Meter measures the total amount of dissolved 'stuff' in your water. The majority of this, but not all, will be CaCo3 (Calcium Carbonate), which is the culprit for making your water hard.
To use them simply reveal the metal prongs and hover them in a shallow cup of your tap water.
Our engineers are equipped with these, as they are an industry standard!
3. Use a Hach Test Kit
Much like the first option, this test kit will give you the hardness of your water using a colour scale. This is a typical titration set-up.
Put a small quantity of the powder into a cup, and let it dissolve.
The water should begin red. Slowly add drops of the solution, and count the drops until the water suddenly becomes blue, as shown in the picture.
For this particular kit, each drop is one grain per gallon, and then to finalise a hardness value in ppm multiply by 17.1.
These kits are available at Hach.com
Note: We don't recommend using the 'soap method' to measure the hardness of your water, as it can be inaccurate and may be up to the interpretation of the person whether the water is hard or not. Purchasing an accurate test is recommended.
If you need help testing your water, do not hesitate to contact us!