If I Live by a Water Tower, Can I Still Have Hard Water?

Water towers are essential parts of most cities. Since they store massive amounts of water, they tend to be large, tall, and the perfect place to put the city’s name. Sometimes privately owned water towers are set on top of the buildings they serve, but the principle remains the same. Water towers hold safe, drinkable water for people in cities. Cities usually treat their water before it reaches the water towers, but that doesn’t mean the water is softened first.

How Cities Treat Water

City water treatment plants have a primary objective of providing water that is safe to the resident they serve. Achieving that goal comes through both removing unwanted issues and including additives to prevent contamination. They address major water concerns like contaminants that would be harmful to your health, or iron and some other metals if present, by filtering the water at their facility to reduce those items to an acceptable level. These water treatment plants will also add chlorine to make it harder for bacteria and other micro-organisms to live and multiply in the water during its journey to your home’s tap.

Because it is not harmful to your health, most municipalities will not reduce the mineral content that makes water “hard,” like calcium and magnesium. Unfortunately, hard water does cause a lot of other issues throughout your home when it comes to your plumbing, appliances, skin, and hair. Since about 90% of homes in the United States have hard water issues, water softeners are some of the most common water treatment systems used in the home after the city’s treatment. There are also a variety of ways to affordably remove the added chlorine found in city water in your home as well to improve the taste of the water from your tap or reduce the effects chlorine has on drying out your skin.

Homes and businesses in most cities do benefit from drinkable city-treated water, but there is more that can be done to improve the quality of water beyond the basic services they provide.

Why Do We Need Water Towers?

Water towers are simple, but incredibly vital parts of any city’s water system. Pumps feed water up into big tanks where millions of gallons of water wait to be used. Since the water is positioned high up, it flows down out of the tower thanks to gravity, creating the water pressure everyone expects in their home or business. As long as the pumps that lift the water into the tower continue to function, water is constantly moving in a water tower. Water is always coming in, and always flowing out. Still, the water that comes from water towers in most areas carries hardness minerals.

What Are Hard Water Minerals?

Most natural water sources in the United States have hard water. That is because hard water minerals like calcium and magnesium from rock dissolve into water and travels with it until it is used in our showers, faucets, and washing machines. Hardness minerals like these are responsible for serious plumbing issues, from scale buildup in pipes and appliances, to unsightly cosmetic concerns like soap scum. Although both calcium and magnesium are elements essential to human life, their presence in hard water is usually in a form our bodies cannot use in the digestive process. Also, they have negative effects on the outside of our bodies, by stripping the natural oils created by our skin and hair. This leads to extra dry, itchy skin, and brittle, frizzy hair. Because of these and other concerns, calcium and magnesium are undesirable water contaminants for daily use in our homes.

Why you Should have a Water Softener

Even the best municipally treated water will have some hard water minerals in it. As different areas of the country have different geographies, different areas face different levels of water hardness. So many major cities have hard water that water softeners are common in apartment buildings, hotels, restaurants, suburban homes, and other places. Soft water helps keep appliances from accumulating scale buildup, it makes soap work more efficiently, and it sets the stage for better water. Combining a water softener with a water filter system tailored to remove the chlorine added to city water allows you to enjoy the highest quality water.

What Water Treatment Solutions Are There for City Water?

Evolve^® makes a variety of water treatment products that fit right in with homes and businesses. Between water filtering and water softening, there are a few options that work well to add to the treatment provided by your city.

• Evolve Softeners: We carry a variety of water softener styles to fit your home and budget. The high-performance resin inside can reliably reduce hard water minerals for many years with very little maintenance.
• Evolve R/C Softeners: This model takes the power of water softening and combines it with filtration capabilities to reduce hard water problems and the irritation of chlorine in a single system. It is divided into two separate chambers to do twice the amount of work for your entire home.
• Evolve Filters: If you live in an area that does not have hard water concerns, but you still want to remove the strong smells and taste of chlorine from your water, we have both whole-home filtration and drinking water filter options available. A whole-home filter would help eliminate the “swimming pool” smell from your sinks, showers, and water-using appliances. If you only need to remove the chemical taste from the water you’re drinking, a smaller under-the-sink filter can be used to reduce the chlorine right at your tap.

How to Find out how Hard your Water is

Water hardness changes from city to city across the country. Some areas suffer from incredibly hard water while others only deal with it a little bit, but hard water affects most Americans. Water is considered hard by most classifications when there are 10 grains per gallon of hard water minerals or more. Hardness can reach 180 grains per gallon or more in some areas, making a water softener far more essential there than in other places.

If you’re curious about how hard your water is, you can find out with a free water test from one of our water experts. A free water test will identify the hardness of your water and detect any other common contaminants you may have. Knowing all of this, our Evolve^® factory-trained team can recommend a customized water treatment solution that is right for your water needs. Call today to schedule a free water test!