Water softners

Ok have a question on water softeners. We need to get one due to hard water I hear these ore no good for someone watching their sodium intake. Does anyone have on to share their experiences with it ? Thanks

1 Comments

Ion-exchange water softeners do increase sodium

by crustyg - 2019-07-14 04:26:58


Hi Patsy2728:

The original home water softener based on ion-exchange (the 'Permutit' product) does indeed increase your water sodium intake and this water is *not* suitable for people who need to watch their dietary sodium.  For this reason folk used to recommend that the main water tap in the kitchen was *not* fed from the wate softener.  You can always tell this type of system - you're required to put salt into it every so often.

Reverse-osmosis systems don't have this drawback - but they do require electricity to operate.  The semi-permeable membrane prevents calcium and magnesium etc. from passing through, but they depend on the hard-water side being at much higher pressure than the pure-water side (to push the water molecules through, against the natural osmotic pressure), which requires a pump.  They are relatively slow, so always require some sort of reservior.  Depending on your requirements (softened water for showers, washing of clothes etc.) they may become very expensive and require quite a large reservoir.

Hope that helps.

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