Google the words “Hard Water Treatment” and you’ll get a limitless amount of links to explore, but how do you know what really works best for you?
Hard Water Treatment with conventional salt-based softeners are definitely the most well known and up until recent years have been the most popular.
A conventional salt softener consists of 2 tanks. One that holds the media and the valve that runs the machine and one that stores all the salt. These systems also need electricity, a drain, and a pretty good knowledge of plumbing and its inner workings to install and properly set-up. They also require annual (if not more) maintenance, meaning time, energy, and money. They soften water via the ion exchange process where hardness in the water is replaced with salt.
How much salt these systems use depends on the grains of hardness your water contains and how much water is used. Making a trip to the store, purchasing the numerous bags of salt, packing them home, then dumping, cleaning, and refilling the brine tank, all part of the responsibilities of the softener owner, that’s you. These systems are great and definitely do the job of making your water soft. However, with busier lives, environmental awareness and subsequent bans on salt softeners, it became necessary to find alternate methods to hard water treatment.
Why a ban on salt-based softeners?
Salt-based softeners must regenerate to get rid of the hardness minerals they've collected so they can continue to do their softening job. The regeneration process creates a waste stream containing highly concentrated salt. When the salty waste is drained into a municipal sewer system the waste is treated by a process that does not remove the salt. The salt is then passed into the environment, usually a river. This, in turn, raises the amount of salt in the river and eventually groundwater that is recharged by the water from the river.
Rising levels of salt in our water supply is problematic, especially for farmers who rely upon this water to raise and produce crops. Simply put, high salt levels in the water used by farmers, damages and even kill their crops.
Treating Hard Can Be Easy with Cascadian
In 2011 Cascadian water introduced the Next Generation in water treatment, our ICS (Integrated Cartridge Solutions™) systems. You see, the ICS filters are manufactured with Polycor™ technology making salt packing, back washing, automatic systems, a thing of the past. The core of our filters contain Polyhalt® a specialized polyphosphate. Natural Polyphosphates have been used by municipalities across the nation for 100 years to treat and protect water distribution lines and equipment. Polyphosphates are proven to help with hard water, staining, and problematic silica build-up. PolyHalt softens and treats water via the ion bond process.
The ICS treatment system uses a small 4.5” x 20” housing that has a removable cartridge. These systems are easy to install and maintain. A simple 10-minute filter change once a year will keep your water clean and tasting great. Even better still is there is no need for electricity or drains. These systems are fully self-contained and require very little space, making them truly one of the easiest, most affordable, lowest maintenance options for water treatment.
Fixing your hard water doesn't have to be difficult, complicated or expensive. Those days are gone. Cascadian's PolyHalt ion bond water control systems are easy to buy, install and maintain.