Hard water, soft water - how to know the difference?!
Hard water, soft water - how to know the difference?
Singapore answerers know :-
How to know the water from my kitchen tap is "hard" or "soft" water?
Answers:
Hard water contains higher-than-ordinary levels of dissolved minerals (strictly speaking, dissolved positive metallic ions) such as magnesium and calcium.
The principal disadvantage of hard water is that the dissolved ions react with the chemicals in soap to create a sticky scum or curd. Most soaps are made from compounds of sodium and potassium such as sodium stearate. Sodium stearate reacts with calcium compounds in the water to produce calcium stearate. Sodium stearate dissolves in water, but calcium stearate doesn't, meaning YOU GET LESS LATHER AND MORE GUNK, a film, of sorts.
The upshot is that hard water doesn't wash as well as soft water. Clothes and sheets washed in hard water can feel rough, even harsh to the touch. Dishes, especially glasses, can display water spotting, streaking, or a visible film. Skin washed in hard water is typically reported as feeling scratchy and dry as a result of the soap scum, and hair is often described as being dull-looking and sticky.
Then again, it all depends on what you're used to. People who have been born and raised using hard water are accustomed to the feeling of their clothes, bedding, skin and hair after washing. That seems clean to them, while the end result of washing with soft water often doesn't.
Besides the simplest means of detection (if the water is very soft, soap will tend to lather up easily when agitated, whereas with hard water it will not), toothpaste will also not froth well in hard water. Too, the pH of soft water tends to be low while the pH of hard water tends to be high. You may, over time, see a whiteish build-up of mineral deposits in the sink or on the shower head from the hard water. As for more exact methods of hardness detection, use a wet tiltration method to determine hardness.
Source(s):
P.S. - Why the "thumbs down"?? I'm curious.
For ph62198: I realize that you know that both the mineral content and acidity of the water used in baking may greatly affect the finished baked product:
http://www.triangularwave.com/bakeryeffe...
A quick easy way to tell is to wash your hands. If the soap lathers really easily and rinses off, it's soft water. If it's difficult to lather and stays filmy, feeling like you can't get it off, it's hard water..
if you put salt into a water softener then its a good bet that its soft, other wise its hard.
hard water takes longer to lather up soap + shampoo etc. Plus you will use bars of soap quickly as you need more than you would if you had soft water. I know as I used to live in a place that had soft water and now I live in malta and the water is really hard.
...take a cup full of the water you want to test... take a "drop" of dish-soap... mix it in... sudds ? ...soft water... no suds or poor suds... hard... :o)