Is your water too hard?

We often get questions regarding hard water and what can be done about it, hard water is high in dissolved minerals with magnesium and calcium being the main culprits. When rain falls it is free of minerals and therefore soft, it picks up minerals along the way as it passes through sand, soil and rock.

If your water is hard you’ll see spots on your glasses when they come out of the dishwasher and your dishes will look cloudy, and your clothes won’t come out perfectly clean from the washing machine. Towels will get scratchy and rough and fabric will appear to fade over time. Whites can also become yellow prematurely (our Green Goddess Bluing Powder is helpful in fixing this issue along with sunlight).

When washing your clothes you may want to add more laundry powder to the wash in the hope that this will sort out the problem but it won’t. The answer is to add soda ash (Sodium carbonate) to the wash with every load. Soda Ash reacts with the minerals and helps to soften the water thus giving you cleaner clothes and softer towels. It will also help prevent build up in your washing machine due to the water being softer and therefore less calcifying minerals flushing through your machine.

If you already have build up and your machine is dirty use this natural method to clean it.

To soften the water when washing a load of clothes add a teaspoon of soda ash to an average load along with your regular laundry powder.

For the dish washer, add 1/8 of a teaspoon of soda ash to the dish powder when washing a load of dishes. Also add double strength cleaning vinegar to the rinse compartment for shiny glasses and sparkly plates.

If you have one of our 1kg bags of Citrus Dish Powder you can add 1/4 cup of soda ash to the bag and mix it in well, then you don’t have to think about it each time you do a load.

Another giveaway is stains in your toilet bowl, this is common when there is a high mineral content in your water. To remove the stains follow the instructions in this blog.If you have an extreme hard water issues your taps and shower head can calcify and it can cause issues with your hot water cylinder and can potentially clog your water pipes. If you are on town water supply contact your local council and ask what can be done about it, filtering the water correctly before it gets to your home is their responsibility.

If you’d like to find out the mineral quality of your water (if you are on town water supply) in New Zealand click here.