Hard water? Test it before you buy anything.

Huntsville Utilities water isn’t all the same. Most of it is Tennessee River water, which runs about 65 to 75 mg/L of hardness, around 4 grains per gallon. That’s moderately hard. The water from HU’s wells runs about 160 to 170 mg/L, or 9 to 10 grains, and that’s hard. Which one reaches your tap makes a real difference in whether a softener is worth buying.

Find your number first

1. Pull up your utility’s yearly water quality report, sometimes called a Consumer Confidence Report. Hardness is in there with everything else they test for. If you’re in Huntsville and don’t know whether you get river water or well water, call Huntsville Utilities and ask.
2. Or test it yourself. Hardness strips from the hardware store read in a few seconds. Dip one in a glass of cold tap water and match the color to the chart. If it reads in mg/L, divide by 17.1 to get grains per gallon.

Outside Huntsville, the water comes from somewhere else. Madison Utilities treats mostly Tennessee River water at its Quarry Water Treatment Plant and adds wells during high demand. Decatur Utilities draws from Wheeler Reservoir, and Athens Utilities uses the Elk River. Outside the city limits there, your water may come from the Limestone County Water and Sewer Authority instead. Each one publishes its own report.

On a private well, none of that applies. Get your water tested before you buy any treatment equipment, and test for more than hardness. A well can have iron, sulfur, or bacteria that a softener won’t touch.

Do you need a softener?

At around 4 grains, most of what hard water does is a cleaning chore. You wipe white crust off the faucets, soak the showerhead in vinegar once in a while, and flush the water heater. Lots of households live with that happily, and we wouldn’t push a softener on them.

At 9 or 10 grains, scale builds up faster and it’s harder to stay ahead of. You’ll see spots on every glass, a ring in the toilet that won’t scrub off, and sediment piling up in the bottom of the water heater. That last one is the popping and rumbling you hear when it heats. More on that in our post about water heater popping noises. If you’ve got a tankless water heater on water that hard, a softener is worth a serious look, since tankless units are fussy about scale.

Softener or filter?

These two get confused all the time.

A softener deals with the minerals. As water passes through a tank of resin beads, the calcium and magnesium get traded for sodium, or potassium if you buy that kind of salt. Every so often the unit rinses itself and sends the rinse water down a drain. Taste and chlorine smell aren’t its job.

Carbon filters go after taste and odor, mainly chlorine. A whole-house filter covers every tap, and an under-sink one covers a single faucet, usually the kitchen, for drinking and cooking water. Neither kind removes hardness.

Scale and spotty glasses point to a softener, and a chlorine taste points to a filter. Some homes end up with both. Our hard water guide has more on what hardness does to your plumbing.

What an install involves

A softener usually goes where the main water line comes into the house, often in the garage, so it treats the water before it reaches the water heater. It needs a drain for the rinse water and an outlet for its control head. It also gets a bypass valve, so you can take it offline without shutting off the house.

We’d usually leave the outside spigots on unsoftened water. Your lawn and garden don’t need it, and there’s no reason to spend salt on them.

When you call, tell us your hardness number if you have it and what’s bothering you about the water.