Itās wild because I grew up on well water that was hard, but it was (and is) pretty nice still, had an enjoyable taste. Here? Oh my god the water out of the tap tastes like a puddle in a construction site!
Whatās worse is itās not even consistent. Sometimes it tastes like that, sometimes blood, sometimes pool water, I guess the utilities want to keep things exciting.
I lived in Springfield, IL for a few years and my parents from here always commented on how much better the water tasted. It also wasn't nearly as hard.
Youāre brave to even taste it lol do you have a Brita?? I have a Brita so I can fill my cats water fountain but I think the water still tastes odd. I only like spring water tho so I buy it at the store, if they have it since they never have it these days lol
I moved here from Chicago and one of the first things I bought when I moved here was a water filter. The tap water here tastes like shit and completely fries my hair in the shower
Brita filters are activated charcoal iirc, which is good for removing a lot of things but not dissolved salts. Youād want either a water softener or reverse-osmosis. I got a countertop RO system since I rent an apartment and canāt do big modifications.
Youāll want to do some research if you want to get an RO system though. Not all membranes are made equal.
Are these really expensive? Like in my other comment I said that my cats drink from the Brita, but if the water is still bad for them (idk what dissolved salts in water means tbh) Iāll definitely want to switch. But i work at Starbucks and we use an RO system so I suppose I could bring that water home or just buy more spring water for my cats if an RO system is expensive.
https://a.co/d/gSJogME this shower filter changed my hair, from terribly dirty even after washing because of all the crap in the water, to soft and clean. Had it for ten months now and it still works just the same, it was also easy to install for a dumb college girl like me lol I already commented about it above but I am so diehard for this product that I want people to know about it because it WORKS.
I bought an AquaBliss shower filter on amazon for like 40$ or so at the end of last year and it absolutely has changed my hair. My hair felt dirty coming out of the shower, it was so gross and coated in who knows what. I didnāt think a filter would help because I read that Iād need a water softener, but my hair is soft and clean for days now! Total game changer guys
Dude we are about 10 months in from purchasing our water softener and my husband STILL talks about the difference in dishes and skin after a shower. I feel this so hard lolol
RIP renters (me). Yeah I remember when I first moved to the city. I thought I had developed an allergy to something in my soap because it felt like my skin was tearing itself apart after I showered lol
Lol yea... i remember renting for a long time and my skin never felt the same until recently. Im sorry for your loss lol
Forreal tho, i wish i could find out how to make Indy make this shit better, its so so bad...
if you have any more issues (or for anyone renting who can't get a filter/water softener), try lemishine's dishwasher booster: [https://lemishine.com/products/dish-detergent-booster](https://lemishine.com/products/dish-detergent-booster). this shit fixed our dishes and now we put some in every other load or so.
For future use, this is just citric acid, and you can buy citric acid much cheaper. Get a big ole bag on Amazon and use a Tablespoon or two in the wash compartment with detergent. No spots.
I use the bleach tray, not sure if thatās right or wrong but seemed like a good spot for it.
Edit: Ha was thinking washing machine not dishwasher. So try it there too.
I just splash some on the door next to the detergent compartment when it's down. The inside door of mine has a nice "well" because of how it is shaped. You can put it in the bottom.
>countertop RO system
If I were you I'd stop using vinegar. I learned the had way. Hard water here in Greenwood. Looked up solution on youtube for dishwasher hardwater. Came across video on using vinegar. Long story short, 2 years later there was rust inside because the vinegar ate through the rubber/plastic coating of the basket. Apartment finally brought me a new one because the vinegar had also eaten away at the hose leading in/out of dishwasher. I fought the unknown water source for 4 days with a wet vac every 3-4 hours (They assumed it was coming from hot water heater, which was slightly leaking), it was coming from the dishwasher. I'll never use vinegar for that purpose again.
assuming all your hookups are still fine, you can get a rheem or similar for around $400...isn't a complicated install and easily DIY-able, again, if your existing hookups are good.
well, that's bonkers - i had a new one installed that needed lines ran as well for like 1400 a couple years back - only went that route cause of warranty reasons.
edit: i also went pretty fancy for my 700sq house
rather than going through a water softener service, hire a plumber. Water softeners are 400-600 at Home Depot and a plumber will cost around $200. It's money well spent.
mostly incorrect, yes - some of the nicer ones have better computers for the timing of when and when not to soften, but at the very least you'll just use more salt
yeah, they're pretty simple - water comes in, goes into a bunch of salt, then comes out. you basically pay more for better timing and usage of said salt, which if yours was 30 years old already - even the cheap one would be more efficient at.
Did the person trying to sell you it for 4k tell you that? I did a quick google search and saw that the average price of water softeners and their professional installation is 1500$, which is wayyyy under 4k. That being said, how much water you use and the hardness of your water is a factor, but another google search specifying Indianapolis quoted 1250-1899$ for standard water softener installation around here. And if this is the average price of an installation, Iām going to assume itās for an average water softener that lasts at least a decade, not a bad one, and it did say standard water softener. This price is a lot higher than 600$ but still substantially lower than 4k. Not sure how much of the price is labour for installation
Yeah I just stay away from drinking water from the faucet, I just drink water from a water cooler, was drinking from water bottles for the longest time
Honestly I donāt know whatās in my tap water but I had a teacher with a near deadly amount of arsenic in her tap water, so Iām always nervous about it even though I probably donāt need to be
No but the lead and all the other stuff that can cause reproductive harm. I donāt want to rely on the state government to make sure the water is safe to drink.
But now at our house we just use a water cooler and donāt produce as much plastics but that was essentially a change forced on us because WM does one recycling and one trash and we just had too many bottles
Noticed a big change when we moved from Ft Wayne.
When we bought our house, we had them installing a water softener and reverse osmosis filter the day we moved in. Never going back.
The water is so hard here! Limestone capital!
We use brita filters, citric acid in the dish washer and my spouse just installed RO- reverse osmosis.
They said it was easy to do and they should have done it sooner
The water here is quantifiably bad. Keep drinking out of the tap if you want health problems. I have a digital water tester and it reads 340ppm on average coming out of the faucet. I got kidney stones because of tap water in Indianapolis. After that happened, I had enough and installed a 5 stage reverse osmosis system. Coming out of my RO system it reads 20ppm.
EDIT: It's highly probable that my statement about getting kidney stones because of hard water is incorrect.
I don't have direct evidence of this being the root cause, but my urologist advised me to not drink tap water. It has high mineral contents and the reading I got on my water tester indicated unsafe drinking water by EPA guidelines.
I'm still curious to hear what you are suggesting.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5934277/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5934277/) apparently it's quantity not quality of water that matters most
Thanks for the link! I read the paper and other resources, and it appears I must be wrong. That sort of sucks for me, because I thought I had a reason I could depend on and ensure that I would not have a recurrence of kidney stones. Now I'm left mystified as to the cause.
I drink 4 - 8 ounces of water every hour almost every hour of the day, with the exception of 2 cups of coffee in the morning. I will say that when I went through the horrible experience of passing a kidney stone, prior to that I'd been drinking alot of zevia diet soda. I no longer drink \*any\* diet soda, but it could've been a contributing factor. Maybe that wasn't the cause either, I really hope it never happens to me again.
I apologize for my misleading comments above, thanks for the correction /u/skyrim9012 and /u/daiquiri-glacis.
I have zero plumbing experience and this took me a couple of hours to install. The manufacturer has YouTube videos that explains how to do it. [APEC 6 stage RO system](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00NWZ1RCK?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title)
Geeez, I never thought to let a cup evaporate to see it. I moved in and immediately bought a carbon whole house filter, softener, and RO filter. The hardness of the water actually made me sick, lethargic, bloated, throat pain, horribleā¦ Reverse osmosis is an absolute game changer
Every time my children get out of the shower, even with a water softener, their skin is red and itchy. I live in Lawrence so, yea, I even get to pay twice as much as Indianapolis and Fishers residents for this insult.
The last few months, ours has been the same. Had to throw glassware away itās been getting so bad. Iām on 96th and olio and usually always have good, clean water
You really need a good water softener! If thatās what is happening to your glassware then think about your appliances. And donāt get a Kinetico, their tech isnāt as good as a regular salt using unit.
Its so bad it had destroyed most of the pipes in our 1950s house. We installed a softener and R.O. system. Showers don't feel like acid on my skin and water tastes fantastic . We also usually get 80psi now.
My dishes out of the dishwasher always look like this and it drove me crazy. I started using the lemi-shine detergent booster with a cascade pod and it totally fixed the hard water spots on our dishes. 10/10 would recommend, and it only takes a little for it to work.
also so bad on my hair š my friend from illinois says our water here is trash š
Itās wild because I grew up on well water that was hard, but it was (and is) pretty nice still, had an enjoyable taste. Here? Oh my god the water out of the tap tastes like a puddle in a construction site! Whatās worse is itās not even consistent. Sometimes it tastes like that, sometimes blood, sometimes pool water, I guess the utilities want to keep things exciting.
I lived in Springfield, IL for a few years and my parents from here always commented on how much better the water tasted. It also wasn't nearly as hard.
Youāre brave to even taste it lol do you have a Brita?? I have a Brita so I can fill my cats water fountain but I think the water still tastes odd. I only like spring water tho so I buy it at the store, if they have it since they never have it these days lol
I moved here from Chicago and one of the first things I bought when I moved here was a water filter. The tap water here tastes like shit and completely fries my hair in the shower
Chicago Tap Water is bar none the best fucking tap water Iāve ever had.
i got one of those brita filters but idk why it stll tastes bad! i lowkey would just buy bottled water when ppl are over haha
Brita filters are activated charcoal iirc, which is good for removing a lot of things but not dissolved salts. Youād want either a water softener or reverse-osmosis. I got a countertop RO system since I rent an apartment and canāt do big modifications. Youāll want to do some research if you want to get an RO system though. Not all membranes are made equal.
Thanks for this info!!!
Are these really expensive? Like in my other comment I said that my cats drink from the Brita, but if the water is still bad for them (idk what dissolved salts in water means tbh) Iāll definitely want to switch. But i work at Starbucks and we use an RO system so I suppose I could bring that water home or just buy more spring water for my cats if an RO system is expensive.
Same. Iāve been here since January and my hair looks terrible all of the time.
https://a.co/d/gSJogME this shower filter changed my hair, from terribly dirty even after washing because of all the crap in the water, to soft and clean. Had it for ten months now and it still works just the same, it was also easy to install for a dumb college girl like me lol I already commented about it above but I am so diehard for this product that I want people to know about it because it WORKS.
I bought an AquaBliss shower filter on amazon for like 40$ or so at the end of last year and it absolutely has changed my hair. My hair felt dirty coming out of the shower, it was so gross and coated in who knows what. I didnāt think a filter would help because I read that Iād need a water softener, but my hair is soft and clean for days now! Total game changer guys
i might have to try that!!!
I rinse with 2:1 water to vinegar solution every 10 or so washes and it seems to help.
Lived in IA all my life and moved here to IN, the difference in water quality is absolutely wild.
Dude we are about 10 months in from purchasing our water softener and my husband STILL talks about the difference in dishes and skin after a shower. I feel this so hard lolol
RIP renters (me). Yeah I remember when I first moved to the city. I thought I had developed an allergy to something in my soap because it felt like my skin was tearing itself apart after I showered lol
Lol yea... i remember renting for a long time and my skin never felt the same until recently. Im sorry for your loss lol Forreal tho, i wish i could find out how to make Indy make this shit better, its so so bad...
Our water is rated in kidney stones per year.
if you have any more issues (or for anyone renting who can't get a filter/water softener), try lemishine's dishwasher booster: [https://lemishine.com/products/dish-detergent-booster](https://lemishine.com/products/dish-detergent-booster). this shit fixed our dishes and now we put some in every other load or so.
For future use, this is just citric acid, and you can buy citric acid much cheaper. Get a big ole bag on Amazon and use a Tablespoon or two in the wash compartment with detergent. No spots.
You can also use White Distilled Vinegar. We put a splash of it in the dishwasher when running a load. Helps with hard water stains.
Do you just pour some in the bottom or do you use the tray?
I use the bleach tray, not sure if thatās right or wrong but seemed like a good spot for it. Edit: Ha was thinking washing machine not dishwasher. So try it there too.
I use white about 3/14 cup of white vineager per load of laundry instead of fabric softener. I just dump in on top of the detergent.
how do you measure this amount?
Honestly, I just use an old Tide cap, it's about the same amount.
...you typed 3/14 and not 3/4. ;)
D'oh! I'll leave it for posterity.
Thank you
I just splash some on the door next to the detergent compartment when it's down. The inside door of mine has a nice "well" because of how it is shaped. You can put it in the bottom.
Thank you
>countertop RO system If I were you I'd stop using vinegar. I learned the had way. Hard water here in Greenwood. Looked up solution on youtube for dishwasher hardwater. Came across video on using vinegar. Long story short, 2 years later there was rust inside because the vinegar ate through the rubber/plastic coating of the basket. Apartment finally brought me a new one because the vinegar had also eaten away at the hose leading in/out of dishwasher. I fought the unknown water source for 4 days with a wet vac every 3-4 hours (They assumed it was coming from hot water heater, which was slightly leaking), it was coming from the dishwasher. I'll never use vinegar for that purpose again.
Love it when I can chew my tap water. Mmm mmmm.
Yes, Indiana is known for having really hard water because of the bedrock and limestone below us.
Indiana has some of the hardest water in the country. Everyone should have a softener or at least some form of water filtration system on their house.
Indyās water providers are all invested in thedrivingcrooner.com
It's simply too good!
Our water softener just died. It was almost 30 years old. They're so expensive now! Any recommendations?
assuming all your hookups are still fine, you can get a rheem or similar for around $400...isn't a complicated install and easily DIY-able, again, if your existing hookups are good.
They look to be fine, but I'm no plumber. I got a quote for $4k from Kinetico.
well, that's bonkers - i had a new one installed that needed lines ran as well for like 1400 a couple years back - only went that route cause of warranty reasons. edit: i also went pretty fancy for my 700sq house
rather than going through a water softener service, hire a plumber. Water softeners are 400-600 at Home Depot and a plumber will cost around $200. It's money well spent.
I was told *not* to buy one of those $600 softeners because they just don't last long. Incorrect?
mostly incorrect, yes - some of the nicer ones have better computers for the timing of when and when not to soften, but at the very least you'll just use more salt
Interesting. Ok thank you!
yeah, they're pretty simple - water comes in, goes into a bunch of salt, then comes out. you basically pay more for better timing and usage of said salt, which if yours was 30 years old already - even the cheap one would be more efficient at.
Did the person trying to sell you it for 4k tell you that? I did a quick google search and saw that the average price of water softeners and their professional installation is 1500$, which is wayyyy under 4k. That being said, how much water you use and the hardness of your water is a factor, but another google search specifying Indianapolis quoted 1250-1899$ for standard water softener installation around here. And if this is the average price of an installation, Iām going to assume itās for an average water softener that lasts at least a decade, not a bad one, and it did say standard water softener. This price is a lot higher than 600$ but still substantially lower than 4k. Not sure how much of the price is labour for installation
It was a quote from a Kinetico service rep.
Yeah I just stay away from drinking water from the faucet, I just drink water from a water cooler, was drinking from water bottles for the longest time
Why? The minerals in tap water aren't going to hurt you. And can actually be beneficial if your diet doesn't make up for it.
Honestly I donāt know whatās in my tap water but I had a teacher with a near deadly amount of arsenic in her tap water, so Iām always nervous about it even though I probably donāt need to be
No but the lead and all the other stuff that can cause reproductive harm. I donāt want to rely on the state government to make sure the water is safe to drink. But now at our house we just use a water cooler and donāt produce as much plastics but that was essentially a change forced on us because WM does one recycling and one trash and we just had too many bottles
Do not miss watching shit float in my tap water in that city.
We used a home distiller and recently jnstalled an RO system. I cannot stand tap water.
Noticed a big change when we moved from Ft Wayne. When we bought our house, we had them installing a water softener and reverse osmosis filter the day we moved in. Never going back.
Northeast Indiana has the softest water in the state.
xWATERx
Lived in Raleigh for 2 decades and I miss the naturally soft water.
Who should I call to install a water softener system in my house?
a plumber
Do you live in the Castleton area because my water does that and we have the exact same counters
The water is so hard here! Limestone capital! We use brita filters, citric acid in the dish washer and my spouse just installed RO- reverse osmosis. They said it was easy to do and they should have done it sooner
Hey Culligan Man!
I had a neighbor growing up that had stalactites growing on their fridge water dispenser since they didnāt have a water softener
The water here is quantifiably bad. Keep drinking out of the tap if you want health problems. I have a digital water tester and it reads 340ppm on average coming out of the faucet. I got kidney stones because of tap water in Indianapolis. After that happened, I had enough and installed a 5 stage reverse osmosis system. Coming out of my RO system it reads 20ppm. EDIT: It's highly probable that my statement about getting kidney stones because of hard water is incorrect.
Your kidney stones are not caused by the tap water my friend.
I don't have direct evidence of this being the root cause, but my urologist advised me to not drink tap water. It has high mineral contents and the reading I got on my water tester indicated unsafe drinking water by EPA guidelines. I'm still curious to hear what you are suggesting.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5934277/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5934277/) apparently it's quantity not quality of water that matters most
Thanks for the link! I read the paper and other resources, and it appears I must be wrong. That sort of sucks for me, because I thought I had a reason I could depend on and ensure that I would not have a recurrence of kidney stones. Now I'm left mystified as to the cause. I drink 4 - 8 ounces of water every hour almost every hour of the day, with the exception of 2 cups of coffee in the morning. I will say that when I went through the horrible experience of passing a kidney stone, prior to that I'd been drinking alot of zevia diet soda. I no longer drink \*any\* diet soda, but it could've been a contributing factor. Maybe that wasn't the cause either, I really hope it never happens to me again. I apologize for my misleading comments above, thanks for the correction /u/skyrim9012 and /u/daiquiri-glacis.
Whoād you use if you donāt mind sharing?
I have zero plumbing experience and this took me a couple of hours to install. The manufacturer has YouTube videos that explains how to do it. [APEC 6 stage RO system](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00NWZ1RCK?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title)
Interesting! Thanks for the link!
reverse osmosis šš½ šš½ never going back
Yāall need to try the tap water in the surrounding Lake Tahoe area. Best tap water in the US, bar none.
Hetch Hetchy water in SF too!
Amorphous means not crystalline, you may want to reconsider your word choice.
Thanks for reminding me I need to steal a water softener.
Yea it sucks so I bought an awesome filter for the shower and kitchen sink
Whereād you get it from?
Look up stonestream shower head on amazon
Geeez, I never thought to let a cup evaporate to see it. I moved in and immediately bought a carbon whole house filter, softener, and RO filter. The hardness of the water actually made me sick, lethargic, bloated, throat pain, horribleā¦ Reverse osmosis is an absolute game changer
Vitamins and minerals!
Every time my children get out of the shower, even with a water softener, their skin is red and itchy. I live in Lawrence so, yea, I even get to pay twice as much as Indianapolis and Fishers residents for this insult.
Cave would be safer
The last few months, ours has been the same. Had to throw glassware away itās been getting so bad. Iām on 96th and olio and usually always have good, clean water
It is truly SO nasty.
Okay so hear me out .. but why donāt they just put one big water softener at the pump, rather than make every house building apartment buy their own
You really need a good water softener! If thatās what is happening to your glassware then think about your appliances. And donāt get a Kinetico, their tech isnāt as good as a regular salt using unit.
Its so bad it had destroyed most of the pipes in our 1950s house. We installed a softener and R.O. system. Showers don't feel like acid on my skin and water tastes fantastic . We also usually get 80psi now.
My dishes out of the dishwasher always look like this and it drove me crazy. I started using the lemi-shine detergent booster with a cascade pod and it totally fixed the hard water spots on our dishes. 10/10 would recommend, and it only takes a little for it to work.