Drinking and thinking… It’s not as maudlin as it sounds.  I sat down with a cool glass of water and my thoughts drifted backwards.  It hit me that I’ve been talking about water for 20 years!  Immediately my thoughts went to how boring I must sound to my friends and I quickly decided to go back to pondering the depth of the water topics rather than a lot of self analysis (much safer ground!).

How can there be enough about water to talk about it for 20 years? Some subjects are frequent, common topics and of course there are always new concerns cropping up regarding water quality.  One of them is sodium. 

Many conversations have revolved around the amount of sodium in the water supply from a water softener.  The fact is that most of the sodium is sent to the drain, not to the house.  Regardless of the water softener brand being used, there’s an easy calculation (see infographic to the right) to let a homeowner know how much sodium ends up in their water. There are also easy solutions for removing it, such as filtration.

So yes, I’m aware that there’s concern about sodium in softened water. But what about the sodium that occurs naturally in ground water or the sodium we take in from the foods we eat?  As an example, an apple contains one or two milligrams of sodium.  That’s pretty insignificant in the overall plan of less than 1500 mg per day. But the thought of trying to find all the sources of sodium makes my blood pressure go up even higher. Who knew apples had any sodium at all!?  On the other hand, sodium is required by the human body, so much so we have taste buds to detect it.  Ever crave potato chips?  I have found that peanut butter cups are the perfect blend of salt and sweet. 

I live in a rural area of northern Ohio.  Salt is commonly used as a de-icer for the roads in the winter.  How much of this salt makes it to my well water supply?  Lake Erie is famous for the salt mine under the lake.  How much salt is naturally in the ground around my home?  I do have a water softener contributing some salt to my water supply and I like apples. When I stop to think about how much sodium is all around me, I guess it’s a good thing I’ve learned to cook using herbs as replacements for salt.

The Mayo Clinic has an excellent Q&A regarding the amount of sodium water softeners add. They state, “The majority of sodium in the average diet comes from table salt and processed foods. Thus, the best way to decrease the sodium in your diet is by cutting back on table salt and processed foods.”

Here’s a recipe for an herbal salt replacement that you can mix up and use on most anything.  Mix it up and keep it stored in an empty spice jar:

• 1 Tbsp ground cayenne pepper
• 1 Tbsp garlic powder
• 1 Tbsp onion powder
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp dried parsley flakes
• 1 tsp dried savory
• 1 tsp ground mace
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tsp dried sage

This can be altered to your taste.  I leave out the mace, cayenne pepper and onion on chicken.  For beef, I usually leave out the sage and thyme.  Cloves and/or caraway go well with pork. These are all great to use in soups and stews in place of salt, as well. Play with it and make it your own. It's a fun way to eliminate sodium, that is, if you like to work in the kitchen.  I’m getting hungry...

Contact Diana M.

L. Heiden has been in the water treatment business for more than 25 years. Currently, she is a National Account Executive for UL and is an active member of the Water Quality Association.

Before my 25 years working in the water treatment industry, all I knew about water was that it was wet and I liked to swim in it. As a child I lived several different places but the one I called home was my grandparent’s house in a small village in Northeastern Ohio. This was the home that my father and his siblings grew up in and eventually where I spent my teenage years.

As a teenage girl I took lots of showers. I remember we always used a beauty bar soap which was supposed to be made with “¼ moisturizing cream.”  Funny, but I also remember my skin feeling tight and dry and because of that, I always felt that this was bogus advertising.

As a young adult with a husband and new baby, I lived in the same house in the small village that I grew up in.  I finally got to choose which soaps I wanted to buy and use. I knew one thing; it would not be that bogus soap with the cream in it.  Well, it turned out that no matter what soap I bought, I always had that dry tight feeling after showering. To try and combat this, I’d pour on the lotions and goop up my baby girl with baby oil. This was only a temporary fix.

Eventually, my husband and I bought a house in the country, about fifteen miles away from the house in the village where I grew up. The water in the country was very different. Instead of that dry tight feeling, I was left with a sticky, filmy residue after showering.  It was at this time in my life when I was first introduced to water treatment.  It was like a light clicked on in my head when I started working at Kinetico. I finally learned why there was such a difference in my water when I lived in the small village versus the water in my home in the country. The house in the village was on a city water supply which took water from seven different wells (not always the same ones) every day and chlorinated it to make it safe to drink and use.  This chlorine was the source of my dry tight skin when I lived in my family home; the same feeling you get after swimming in a pool! The water in the country was supplied by a private well on our property. This water was not chlorinated so I did not get that dry tight feeling. However, it was loaded with iron and had a lot of hardness made up of calcium, magnesium and other minerals. The hardness in the well water, along with the iron, I learned, was binding with the soaps and creating a soap curd which clung to my skin and created that nasty sticky feeling after showering. A water softener to get rid of the hardness along with a prefilter ahead of it to trap the red iron and sediment was the cure. I was now able to enjoy my showers and guess what, I could even use that moisturizing soap and realized that the advertisement was not what was bogus it was my water quality!

Now as a mature adult, I’ve come full circle and once again live in the old family home in the village which is now considered a “city” as the population has grown to a whopping 5,000 people! When I first moved back there was an issue with the water meter. The city water department sent a technician to check it out. While he was working on the meter I told him how disgusting I found the water in our village to be. He was surprised and a little shocked.  He informed me that most people felt the water in our village was great.  I am not sure he understood the difference between people thinking the water was great and people not realizing how much better it could be. I’ll admit it …. I am now a water snob after becoming accustomed to dechlorinated - iron free - soft water thanks to my Kinetico equipment. It happens to the best of us. Once you have water without chlorine, minerals, iron and odor, it is difficult to go back to what you previously thought was “great” water.

Contact L Heiden

In the world of home appliances, there are few more mysterious than the water softener.  Most other appliances give blatant clues as to what they do.  A blender puts its handiwork out there for us to detect with loud noises, swirling liquid visions, and conversation-worthy tastes.  The furnace heats you up, the A/C cools you down, the leaf blower, well, it moves things around.  Softeners are much more subtle as they serve silently in some inconspicuous location. 

Why would you ever want to buy a mysterious silent appliance that lives on a diet of salt nuggets?  Many people never make the connection and so they endure the effects of hard water without ever really knowing there was a solution.  They take things like bathtub ring as a natural part of life.  It is actually the product of a reaction between soap and dissolved minerals in the water.  The technical term is soap curd.  Yes, just like in the famous poem featuring Miss Muffet.  A softener exchanges the dissolved calcium ions for sodium or potassium so this reaction can’t happen. 

The softener accomplishes this amazing feat through a process called ion exchange, and it follows the physical laws of electrical attraction and chemistry.  Just like the opposite ends of two magnets attract each other and the similar ends repel each other, ions seek to find their proper place as they float around dissolved in water.  Ions are charged particles, so some have a positive charge of varying degree, and others have a negative charge. 

A classic example of ionization can be seen in table salt, also known as sodium chloride or NaCl.  When dissolved in water, the sodium atoms turn into positive ions by giving up a negative electron to the surrounding water.  The chlorine atoms gain an electron, and in so doing they turn into negatively charged ions.

The media inside the softener uses this principle of opposites attracting each other. It is specially made to have a chemical structure with permanently ionized docking sites to attract and hold positive ions. These docking sites start out loaded with sodium or potassium ions from the salt regeneration process. When hard water passes by on the way to your faucet, the docking sites take on the hardness ions because the attraction is stronger. The ions from the salt are released in exchange, and the result is softened water. I have uploaded a video to this blog to help explain this process - please note the accomplished actor in the video :)

Hopefully some of the mystery is gone, and you can better understand how softening works and some of its benefits. 

Contact Stuart P.