How To: Soften Your Water?

Of all the things we love about LA -- KCRW, hiking trails, easy access to the beach, our car, the weather, our apartment -- there are some things we hate. The water coming out of our faucets is one of them.

In our native city, our hair is bouncy and Breck Girl beautiful. In our adopted city? Definitely the before picture, with itchy skin and lime-encrusted tiles to boot. Short of getting a heavy duty water filter (a budgeted expense for when we buy a house; the regular ones don't filter out lime), we're willing to try anything. So, lately we've taken to rinsing our hair in baking soda dissolved in water but we'd like something to attack the itchy skin problem as well. We heard about a solution involving magnets: placed on the incoming pipes, they apparently act to ionize the water. As we said, we're willing to try anything so we've taped on a half dozen to the pipe leading to our showerhead. Has anyone heard about a filtration system that's affordable for renters?

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[image via Cayusa]

Comments (6)

I read that the magnetic water softeners are a crock.

We were DESPERATE -- our well water is off-the-scale-hard. Seriously. We had a regular water softener that came with the house, but it was pretty useless. And we killed all our grass with salt-treated water before we found a bypass.

After all our research, we found that we needed a heavy-duty 2-part system with a reverse osmosis filter. There are no easy answers, no magic bullets... and nothing for renters I am afraid...

I agree with reverse osmosis -- but good luck tryin to convince the owner to install one!

There are water softeners that you can attach to the shower head. They are huge and not particularly attractive and run around $200. Most are made for the RV industry. Here is the one I have been considering. I haven't purchased it yet, so I have no personal knowledge of effectiveness or ease of use and installation. But every once in a while, when my brown hair starts turning red from all the minerals and rust in my water, I go back to the link and mull it over...

http://www.watersticks.com/shower.htm

Don't know about a filter that will solve your problem but I just moved to a hard water town so I've been reasearching this issue.

Have you thought about a chelating shampoo? I've heard good things about its ability to remove the hard water build up. I'm planning on picking a bottle up tomorrow. I think Joico, Kenra, Nexxus all make them.

For skin, and hair too guess, some people suggest rinsing with distilled water.

I've also heard lots of suggestions for an apple cider vinegar rinse.

Good luck!

Hard water is very common in Europe and if you mention a water softner you may has well be the devil incarnate - cries of "those are so bad for the environment!" make you shrink in guilt.

That said - almost every soap (for dishwashers, clothes washers, shower gel and shampoos) talk about how they're good to use in hard water situations. I don't have a issue for the most part. I just hate breaking out the white vinegar concentrate to de-kalk the faucets and sinks/tubs. Makes the tub super slick so we had to buy a rubber mat thing.

unfortunately this doesn't help the US readers that much...

i'm getting a white grimy grit on all dishes (especially glasses!) in the dishwasher. It's horrible. Additional rinse cycles don't help.
The only solution is to soak the offending items in a vinegar/water solution and then rinse clean.
Makes the house smell like pickles.

LAME.

Thinking about this: http://www.dishwasherfilter.com/product.sc?categoryId=1&productId=1