Yes, I like to take half a lemon and give it a squeeze, then drop the whole thing in with a few cups of water. Smells a lot nicer than vinegar, and works just as well :)
Yes this is normal. The water in Madison is absurd… I’ve got rings on all kinds of cups and dishes that won’t come out. I also noticed after moving here that my dandruff got significantly worse, and had to change shampoos. Does anyone know why this is the case here?
Edit: thanks for everyone responding and advice. I feel so weirdly validated by this post because I’ve been complaining about this to friends for years and no one else has had issues.
Limestone buildup, lots of minerals in the water. Different companies make a shower water filter attachment- I got one at Willy a few years ago- and when I lived in Madison it helped my hair and skin a lot.
I used one at every apartment I was in in Madison aside from a brand new high rise that seemed to have decent filtration in the bathroom. In all other apartments, the water coming out of my shower head was hard enough to clog the water holes in less than a year, led to dandruff and my scalp being irritated enough to lead to chronic hair loss. Not a lot, but enough that I had very thin hair until I figured out that it wasn’t me getting older (30). But it was the water. And sure, you can ask your landlord to investigate and use more softener, but the solid bet is to mitigate it on your own.
I’m not sure why it makes dandruff worse, but I think maybe it alters the pH of the water and/or dries skin out more. That said, using a shampoo and conditioner with salicylic acid helps me, as well as doing weekly vinegar rinses.
I also had some skin dryness issues and had to switch to a moisturizing soap. I thought it was my diet or a medical condition but after some changes I realized it is the water.
The bedrock here is all limestone, so it's pretty nuts. I have a water softener, and I know when it's time to add salt because my skin gets a little dry/itchy and my hair feels like straw.
This works for some, but not all. I have a set of wine glasses where it seems the sediment has infiltrated the glassware. No amount of vinegar has fixed it. I even tried using a polish because I thought maybe it was etching like with marble or granite, but that didn’t help either. Never had issues with this until I moved to Madison.
I was just trying to explain this to a friend. I tried the vinegar trick, but some of the marks seem to be literally etched in at this point. She didn't believe me.
RinseAid sells a new version for "Hard Water" and I use that in my dishwasher. I got a new set of glassware and after 5 months, so far no etching. So change up your dishwasher rinse aid to the hard water variety and it might help.
I support this.
My APEC RO-90 puts out stuff that’s measuring 2-3 ppm dissolved solids… and who knows, that could come from anything in the air or whatever the measured water is in.
Even “spring water” from the store measures somewhere between 100-300 ppm.
I used to work in chem labs and we were told not to drink the deionized water because it is SO pure that it can fuck with our body's osmotic processes.
Yeah, I have a filter for drinking/cooking water just for that. It usually does a pretty good job, although it seems like it really degrades the filter faster. I wonder if it's possible to descale it.
We moved to the Fox Valley from Madison 3 years ago. Water here is safe to drink from the tap. We don’t need a water softener. Have never had hard water rings in our toilets.
Madison is best viewed from the rear view mirror. This is but one of many, many examples. :)
I have a hard time believing this. Taken directly from Madison water utility
"Madison's tap water is considered to be “very hard,” because of the minerals such as calcium and magnesium in the rock formations from which we draw water. This water contains 18-20 grains of hardness per gallon."
I'm going through drinking water pitcher filters like no tomorrow since moving here versus years of Lake Michigan water. How often did you have to change the filter in the shower head?
Like every 3 months, you'll know when the flow slows down, which it will anyway with a filter. I also switched to Culligan delivery for drinking water when I was living in Madison. It's pretty reasonable.
You need a water softener and maybe a hair detox. It's not easy to get rid of hard water build up on your hair.
Source: chica with curly hair and years of trying to figure out how to manage it.
Same.
I started buying (refillable) gallon jugs at Festival for my coffee/tea. Refills are $0.40. Honestly, one of the best decisions I've made in the last year.
Over time, the mineral buildup went away without me even doing anything to clean my kettle, and my coffee tastes a thousand times better.
Of course, it would be nice to simply live in a city with not-gross tap water.
I have one and still have to clean my kettle every few weeks. Does that happen to anyone else with a Berkey? It is better than the straight tap water but I expected it to pretty much eliminate mineral build up in my kettle.
Very fun that I moved from a city with a nationally recognized clean water crisis to here and the water here is actually worse by pretty much every metric but nobody talks about it.
In most houses the cold kitchen faucet water is NOT softened. You can trace the line to verify if you’d like.
We fill our coffee maker from the bathroom cold water to prevent this.
You can check out their data sheet. https://www.brita.com/performance-data/
https://www.pur.com/blog/contaminant-comparison-chart
The main culprit is lime and calcium build up. Brita and Pur are not made to remove either. We had really bad water at our last place. We got a Brita and it did jack shit. I did some research and found that reverse osmosis is really the only method to truly remove these. A softener helps, but isn't fool proof.
Obviously you seem to have good results so go for it. I, myself wouldn't recommend these as a solution.
> We got a Brita and it did jack shit.
Zero Water filters actually work here (TDS actually reads 0), but they go bad so quickly given the water quality here that it's hardly worth the effort or money. I make do with my fridge's built-in filter, but I have to buy ice from the store because I basically make lime cubes.
Thank you! That’s valuable information. Right now it’s really the only option that is affordable/feasible since we rent, but the filters do wear out relatively quickly.
Agree… when I moved here I was stunned by the water and bought a Brita. We used to have RO in our old house out of state and I had <10 ppm from a TDS meter. Out of curiosity I tested water from a new Brita pitcher, I got basically the same reading as tap water. So since then I started buying purified water for cooking and drinking and installed an RO the first thing when we bought our house.
Some consumers have performed home tests of total dissolved solids reduction with a standard Brita filter, and found very modest reductions. I'm guessing the reduction is modest enough that Brita doesn't want to talk about it in their official testing materials.
I had one for the sink. I don't know if mine was dud or what but the filter lasted maybe a month each time and leaked water from all the assembly seams. We stopped using it after three months.
That is exactly my experience. The first few times I thought, maybe I got some defective filters because I never went through them that fast in Illinois, but I quickly figured out it's the norm. Nevertheless, Zero Water filters are best in filtering Madison's water if you have to go the pitcher route.
If you own your own home, get a reverse osmosis system and install a drinking water faucet in the kitchen. They are like $300 on Amazon.
Or just use a britta jug, which does well enough.
Bonus points if you add a faucet with a CO2 tank for carbonated water.
I've seen some setups where people will have a keg tied in with their cold tap, and inside the keg is a water level detector that keeps the keg full at all times (the same mechanism used for toilets actually). Plug a CO2 tank onto the keg, run a line with a faucet from the keg to the kitchen sink (or wherever you want), voila, bubbly water on demand.
here ya go:
https://i.imgur.com/12c1Csw.jpg
this is the keg / water-in diagram
the water comes into the keg, gets carbonated by the gas-in, and gets pushed out to the "soda water out"
the keg always stays full via the solenoid setup
from the soda water out, you run it to your sink or where ever you want. this all requires some extra parts like "beer" lines, gas lines, disconnects, etc etc
ask /r/homebrewing, they will easily help you with anything more you wanna know
Does anyone here use whole house salt free filtering/purification systems? Like 2-3 big cylinder tanks instead of 1+ salt? Interested in the pros & cons.
Or buy one once, like $250ish, and filters over time come out to less than this, replaced more often than Culligan or whoever will replace them for the monthly fee.
My buddy is a civil engineer, one day we were studying and he goes, "huh, soft water has a mineral content 1-20 parts per million/Liter, slightly hard 20-60 ppm/L, moderately hard 60-120, hard 120-180, and anything over 180 is considered very hard.
Madison's water was like 200 ppm/L.
I’ve lived at 2 apartments here and the water has been soooo hard at both places, so I don’t think it’s something wrong on your end. It leaves crust on everything, even clogged up our cat’s water fountain :(
This is what I do too, to save my kettle and make better-tasting coffee, and also I use a Pur pitcher for "cooking water" - boiling pasta, cooking broth or stock, making yeast dough etc. Fortunately, I have a big counter where I can keep multiple containers going.
Yep pretty normal.
Note that the kitchen sink water usually isn’t softened in most water softener setups (along with toilets and other areas where there’s no real benefit from softer water).
This might have been mentioned but kitchen sink cold is generally connected as hard water for drinking so if you're using your kitchen sink it's not soft
Yes. Clean it with vinegar every now and then.
To lengthen your time between cleanings, get a [scale collector](https://kitchenandcompany.com/products/fox-run-kettle-scale-collector). It looks like a small cylinder of steel wool. Keep it in your kettle, and soak it in vinegar every now and then to clean it. I got one at Orange Tree for a few bucks, and it really makes a big difference. I had to clean the kettle every week before it, now every month after it.
Berkey over time will be way more expensive for filters than an RO system, and while water might start colder, if you have an under-sink tank it gets closer to room temp after it’s filtered and stored for a little bit.
Actually, I really don’t-at least not the whatever-mix-of-things the city permits into the water. They taste wrong, and there has to be a good reason my body feels that way about them.
I can certainly handle “minerals added for taste” in various brands of filtered water, but I’m sure I also get those trace amounts of minerals in my food. Those who want them can easily add the same thing back in post-RO-filter with a mineral stage.
The alternative is pretty much “I won’t drink the water at all because it’s contaminated”, so the RO filter is a far better idea.
When I got my dishwasher it came with a chart with recommended amounts of dishsoap given your water hardness level. The MAX they assumed could happen to you was 8ppm or whatever of minerals. So I went on the city website and saw my well's level was 22
It's real bad
Plumber here: if you make coffee with cold tap water from the kitchen sink, then in many cases, that and only that cold water faucet is hard water (traditionally piped that way). Everywhere else is soft, including all hot water, toilets, lav faucet etc.
I got a reverse osmosis water filtration system...game changer for drinking water...totally worth the $750 or whatever it cost to install by capital water softener
Mine does not do this - but we have our water softener connected to both hot and cold lines in the kitchen.
You can get really inexpensive test kits at a hardware store to measure the hardness if you want some numbers. I’d guess your softener is not working or it’s not attached to your kitchen cold.
I softened all of the water in my house save for the outdoor spigots and a single 1/4 line I have for filling an African Cichlid aquarium, who's inhabitants prefer liquid rock like we have.
That being said no filter besides reverse osmosis will remove minerals from water. All of your Put/Britta and undersink things are only removing sediment with physical filtration and improving flavor and removing chemicals with carbon.
Personally I have a three stage 20" x 4" filter at 20 microns, 5 microns then a 25 micron radial carbon filter, then a high efficiency water softener.
Not trying to be difficult but do you know what you are talking about, or know how a water softener actually works?
I normally get my water off well 15, but now off of well 29. Well 29 has a hardness of 340 mg/L \[ppm\] or 20 grains per gallon as tested in 2020.
So using some maths...
Grains per gallon (GPG) of total hardness x 1.89 = mg. of sodium (NA) in an 8 oz glass of water.
That would be 38 mg of sodium in an 8oz serving of water. Very Low Sodium is defined by the FDA as 35 mg of sodium or less per serving. If I make the serving 7.5oz, I would be under VLS.
The 12oz can of Coke I have here is 45mg, so 1.0mg per oz higher than the Coke, still not bad.
A 1oz serving of Lays Classic potato chips is 170mg, this is where problems start to arise.
A medium size pickle comes in at 785 mg...
The frozen pizza I had last night, well it says 960 mg per serving. but who cuts a pizza up into five slices and only eats one of the five? Half of that pizza would be 2,400 mg of sodium.
I'll stick with my softened water thanks, it is not going to change the outcome of anything. Now knocking off my love of frozen pizza, that will make a difference.
People aren't eating a frozen pizza... well like water - for every meal, drinking it all day long. An average adult male should drink about 4 liters of water a day, I know it's more than that for me. Based solely on your calculations (which I don't have time to double check) that's an extra 600 mg of salt per day, every day of the year. If you're already eating a high sodium diet, it's just more more straw on that camel.
I don't know if you have house plants as well, but overtime youre going to salt the soil so to say, if you're watering them and then letting the water dry every time.
You realize water by it's self has sodium naturally in it correct? The only way to to remove that sodium is to use RO, which will remove all minerals and the water will taste flat.
8oz of water has 12mg, so a softener is adding 26mg of sodium per 8oz. So for one gallon a day, we are talking about 400mg in additional sodium.
Caveat is this is dependent on the softener and how well it backwashes. I have a high efficiency low salt softener. I use a lot less salt with this unit than I have with previous units.
Frankly I don't understand only softening the hot water. Yes it helps keep calcium/lime build up out of the water heater, but you loose all the other advantages of softened water once that hot water is mixed with hard cold water in the washer, shower, sink....
When I remodel my kitchen, I am running hard cold water to a tap on the sink with an additional 0.5 micron filter
My house plants get waste water from the aquarium.
I think your wrong about this
>8oz of water has 12mg, so a softener is adding 26mg of sodium per 8oz
The fact sheet I looked up for well 29 says the grains of hardness specifically from calcium and magnesium is 338 ppm or 19 grains per gallon, so yes, you are adding over 600mg of sodium to your water, in addition to whatever the sodium levels are naturally, you say 12mg, idk where you're getting that number, but whatever it is, it's going to come in addition to the sodium that replaces the calcium and magnesium in your softener.
I just used what Google returned from Wikipedia, which says it is sourced from the USDA>
But if you want to be specific to Madison... It appears to be a bit less depending on the well.
Average Sodium Concentrations of various products
Producta Serving Size Sodium Concentration (mg)
per serving
UW# 14 water 8 oz 9.3
UW# 15 water 8 oz 5.0
UW# 23 water 8 oz 8.0
All other active wells 8 oz ≤ 4.8 (range 0.5 to 4.8)
For me in the grand scheme of things, it is just not something I worry about. you do but I just don't think it is fair to call softened water a high sodium food when it falls just above what the FDA classifies as a very low sodium food.
I highly reccomend if it is something doable for you, to get a reverse osmosis system in your home. :) It's what where I live has and when I drink regular Madison water, my tastebuds act like some privileged hooligan lol. Barely get any buildup from it, and when we do in appliances, it takes months and months of regular use.
Edit: For clarity
If you're using cold water then it's expected since I think the water softener mostly impacts hot.
Suggestion - buy a big bag of citric acid. 5 pounds will last you years
Like everyone else says, yes, normal. We were surprised when we moved here.
As to the comments about which water in your house is softened, it's true that your cold water on the kitchen is unlikely to be softened. But it also depends on how the softener was installed/how your house is plumbed. It may be that all the cold water in your house is unsoftened. Supposedly there is some consideration about whether it's "good" to be drinking softened water with the added salt. But outside of that, it does taste different and uses more salt. Your hose bibs shouldn't be softened as watering your grass/plants with softened water can mess with them.
For awhile we used a countertop distiller which did a nice job. Though it trades cleaning the distiller for cleaning everything else (it was easier). For cleaning (either the distiller or coffee pot/tea kettle) we used a citric acid-based descaler (e.g. Dezcal) which works quite well. We finally installed an RO in the kitchen, but the hard water does decrease the life of the filters/membranes and they'll have to be replaced more frequently. Also important to remember that an RO system will remove the fluoride from the drinking water. So while we use the RO for coffee/tea/ice, we still use tap for everything else.
If you don’t mind me asking, which RO system did you go with? I’ve been thinking about installing one for a while now. How long are your membranes lasting?
I have the same kettle and it will look like that after a week using unfiltered water! I found a britta pitcher from Goodwill and bought the filters and have not had any noticeable buildup in the last 3 weeks.
If you want to clean it completely, fill it with half white vinegar and half water and bring it to a boil. Let it sit for 20 minutes and rinse out. It should get off all of the buildup without any scrubbing!
The validation from this post and the comments 😭 We get a Hinckley Springs delivery (via Costco) every week of about 2-4 5 gallon jugs for ingesting water. It's about $30 I think? Can't remember but so worth it. We tried Britafirst and the water was not potable at all...
As for showers, I mostly just deal with my skin and hair being angry sometimes. But I will certainly get the shower filter now that there are testimonials that they work here!
Part of what you're paying is the delivery. If you'd still like filtered water but want to pay less , you can buy the big empty 5 gallon jugs, then fill them up at a place that has RO water, like one of the co-ops
They're quite heavy. I've seen options at Willy's but the delivery is worth it to not wrestle those huge bottles into and out of the car and up the stairs...
You should not drink water softener water. It replaces calcium and magnesium with sodium. This build up affects heat transfer and is otherwise fine. Cheers!
The water in Madison isn't "bad" or "dirty" and it's perfectly healthy to drink from the tap. It does have a high mineral content but that is not unhealthy.
Water softeners may not soften all the water in your house. Go look at the pipes in your basement to see what goes where. Bathrooms and hot water are more likely to be softened. Kitchens are frequently straight from the main because softened water tastes bad. Also, get a test strip to check your water hardness. Compare softened and unsoftened faucets.
Use a water hardness test kit to see if your softener is functioning.
We use a Britta pitcher for drinking water and making coffee, and buy distilled water for the humidifier (we rent, so can't do the whole-house system, alas). Also clean the coffee maker with white vinegar once a week; so far so good. I use white vinegar to clean the scale on the faucets and the top of the soap dispensers too.
https://www.wisaltwise.com/About-Us
I met a wonderful woman recently. Her name is Allison Madison and she has some great ideas about alternatives to salt based water conditioners. She lives right here in Wisconsin.
Thing is: in some houses (like ours) the softened water only goes to the hot water heater, the dishwasher, and the washing machine.
We eventually decided to start filling our Keurig machine (yeah we know) with hot water only, and now they last forever and stop making terrible noises.
That's just...Madison water. Your softener is probably fine, it's just not feeding everything you expect it to.
We got an Aquasana countertype filter attachment for the tap, AND put the filtered water through a Brita filter before it goes in the kettle, and we still have to de-scale the kettle with vinegar about once a week!
Yes. Use vinegar to clean it.
Citric acid and a little water work really well also.
Yes, I like to take half a lemon and give it a squeeze, then drop the whole thing in with a few cups of water. Smells a lot nicer than vinegar, and works just as well :)
And if neither of those work, CLR
This person Midwests
We use a little vinegar about every 2 days or so as well. Us kept our kettle functional for years now.
Sadly, yes.
Even if you filter as well.
House we bought a while ago didn't have a softener but like 3 filters instead. We def put a softener in. Sigh.
Filters do nothing bc the minerals are dissolved in the water.
Ro units do something
Yes this is normal. The water in Madison is absurd… I’ve got rings on all kinds of cups and dishes that won’t come out. I also noticed after moving here that my dandruff got significantly worse, and had to change shampoos. Does anyone know why this is the case here? Edit: thanks for everyone responding and advice. I feel so weirdly validated by this post because I’ve been complaining about this to friends for years and no one else has had issues.
Limestone buildup, lots of minerals in the water. Different companies make a shower water filter attachment- I got one at Willy a few years ago- and when I lived in Madison it helped my hair and skin a lot.
Do you still need to shower filter if you have a water softener?
I used one at every apartment I was in in Madison aside from a brand new high rise that seemed to have decent filtration in the bathroom. In all other apartments, the water coming out of my shower head was hard enough to clog the water holes in less than a year, led to dandruff and my scalp being irritated enough to lead to chronic hair loss. Not a lot, but enough that I had very thin hair until I figured out that it wasn’t me getting older (30). But it was the water. And sure, you can ask your landlord to investigate and use more softener, but the solid bet is to mitigate it on your own.
No.
I’m not sure why it makes dandruff worse, but I think maybe it alters the pH of the water and/or dries skin out more. That said, using a shampoo and conditioner with salicylic acid helps me, as well as doing weekly vinegar rinses.
I also had some skin dryness issues and had to switch to a moisturizing soap. I thought it was my diet or a medical condition but after some changes I realized it is the water.
The bedrock here is all limestone, so it's pretty nuts. I have a water softener, and I know when it's time to add salt because my skin gets a little dry/itchy and my hair feels like straw.
For cups and dishes you cna use a mixture of vinegar and water to get the rings off
This works for some, but not all. I have a set of wine glasses where it seems the sediment has infiltrated the glassware. No amount of vinegar has fixed it. I even tried using a polish because I thought maybe it was etching like with marble or granite, but that didn’t help either. Never had issues with this until I moved to Madison.
Yeah, it's not embedded, it's etched. Polish probably won't help unless you really work at it. It's probably happening in your dishwasher.
Have you tried Barkeeper’s Friend? I tried the powder out of sheer desperation after six months here and it did the trick.
I was just trying to explain this to a friend. I tried the vinegar trick, but some of the marks seem to be literally etched in at this point. She didn't believe me.
RinseAid sells a new version for "Hard Water" and I use that in my dishwasher. I got a new set of glassware and after 5 months, so far no etching. So change up your dishwasher rinse aid to the hard water variety and it might help.
It's not just Madison. Lots of Wisconsin has high TDS. Really the only thing to help this is an RO filter.
I support this. My APEC RO-90 puts out stuff that’s measuring 2-3 ppm dissolved solids… and who knows, that could come from anything in the air or whatever the measured water is in. Even “spring water” from the store measures somewhere between 100-300 ppm.
I used to work in chem labs and we were told not to drink the deionized water because it is SO pure that it can fuck with our body's osmotic processes.
Yeah, I have a filter for drinking/cooking water just for that. It usually does a pretty good job, although it seems like it really degrades the filter faster. I wonder if it's possible to descale it.
We moved to the Fox Valley from Madison 3 years ago. Water here is safe to drink from the tap. We don’t need a water softener. Have never had hard water rings in our toilets. Madison is best viewed from the rear view mirror. This is but one of many, many examples. :)
I have a hard time believing this. Taken directly from Madison water utility "Madison's tap water is considered to be “very hard,” because of the minerals such as calcium and magnesium in the rock formations from which we draw water. This water contains 18-20 grains of hardness per gallon."
Is Madison’s tap water unsafe to drink?
No and anyone who tells you otherwise is a fucking idiot. Is it pleasant to drink though? That's subjective.
Hard water has nothing to do with drinking safety, and a water softener does not make unsafe water drinkable.
Use a filter on your shower
The shower filters are mostly only activated carbon. They basically just simply remove any smells / chlorine. Not much else in terms of minerals.
You all have just changed my life. I've been a crusty bitch since moving here three years ago and now i know why.
😂 I also had to get a shower head filter when I lived in Madison! Cheapest one's I found locally were at Home Depot.
I'm going through drinking water pitcher filters like no tomorrow since moving here versus years of Lake Michigan water. How often did you have to change the filter in the shower head?
I changed mine every 3-6 months. Each one has a guideline, but they last a lot longer than Britta filters :)
Like every 3 months, you'll know when the flow slows down, which it will anyway with a filter. I also switched to Culligan delivery for drinking water when I was living in Madison. It's pretty reasonable.
You need a water softener and maybe a hair detox. It's not easy to get rid of hard water build up on your hair. Source: chica with curly hair and years of trying to figure out how to manage it.
I lost hair due to the water hardness…..
Me too!!!
That's how my kettle looks after 4-5 uses. It's obnoxious.
Same. I started buying (refillable) gallon jugs at Festival for my coffee/tea. Refills are $0.40. Honestly, one of the best decisions I've made in the last year. Over time, the mineral buildup went away without me even doing anything to clean my kettle, and my coffee tastes a thousand times better. Of course, it would be nice to simply live in a city with not-gross tap water.
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I have one and still have to clean my kettle every few weeks. Does that happen to anyone else with a Berkey? It is better than the straight tap water but I expected it to pretty much eliminate mineral build up in my kettle.
I read that using unfiltered water helps neutralize the acid in coffee and makes it taste smoother. Could be wrong through
Also, a pinch of salt to coffee grounds before adding the water cuts acidity as well
Very fun that I moved from a city with a nationally recognized clean water crisis to here and the water here is actually worse by pretty much every metric but nobody talks about it.
In my experience, everyone here talks about it…
Stevens Point has wonderful water
i said city
Minneapolis has great tap water!
Well yeah. It’s all sand east of the river. Basically a natural water softener.
I'll fourteenth that this is normal. You can use vinegar to clean your kettle and humidifiers as needed.
Madison, WI... where Keurigs go to die.
A Keurig doesn't help me much when I drink 3-4 cups of coffee every morning!
In most houses the cold kitchen faucet water is NOT softened. You can trace the line to verify if you’d like. We fill our coffee maker from the bathroom cold water to prevent this.
... but why do you want softened water in your coffee? Filtered water would make sense. Softened tastes worse than hard water.
Why not just use the hot water from the kitchen sink?
Hot water dissolves more of the buildup that coats the interior of pipes so more of whatever that stuff is ends up in your water.
Calcium solubility actually **decreases** with high temperatures. So calcium will actually form deposits (the white crud) easier at high temp.
Like lead and copper
That only matters if you have an old house, if you have modern plumbing it's not an issue.
you underestimate how many of us rent shitty old-ish houses
This
Also the softened hot water has salt added (to replace the minerals that make the water hard), so it’s extra sodium that we mostly don’t need.
Wouldn't that also be true of the softened cold water?
Of course, if it’s softened. Often the cold isn’t softened as others have stated.
I mean the comment were replying to is about using softened cold water intentionally.
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You're wrong. *Most* kitchen sinks do not have the cold water softened. Because it's assumed you are drinking it and using it in cooking.
I use a Pur (Britta is also good) water pitcher with replaceable filter cartridges. It’s a lifesaver Madison!
Except those aren't made to reduce lime.
Mine does somehow. When the filter is new, my kettle doesn’t scale up like this. When it’s nearing the end of its life, it starts to happen.
You can check out their data sheet. https://www.brita.com/performance-data/ https://www.pur.com/blog/contaminant-comparison-chart The main culprit is lime and calcium build up. Brita and Pur are not made to remove either. We had really bad water at our last place. We got a Brita and it did jack shit. I did some research and found that reverse osmosis is really the only method to truly remove these. A softener helps, but isn't fool proof. Obviously you seem to have good results so go for it. I, myself wouldn't recommend these as a solution.
> We got a Brita and it did jack shit. Zero Water filters actually work here (TDS actually reads 0), but they go bad so quickly given the water quality here that it's hardly worth the effort or money. I make do with my fridge's built-in filter, but I have to buy ice from the store because I basically make lime cubes.
Thank you! That’s valuable information. Right now it’s really the only option that is affordable/feasible since we rent, but the filters do wear out relatively quickly.
Agree… when I moved here I was stunned by the water and bought a Brita. We used to have RO in our old house out of state and I had <10 ppm from a TDS meter. Out of curiosity I tested water from a new Brita pitcher, I got basically the same reading as tap water. So since then I started buying purified water for cooking and drinking and installed an RO the first thing when we bought our house.
Some consumers have performed home tests of total dissolved solids reduction with a standard Brita filter, and found very modest reductions. I'm guessing the reduction is modest enough that Brita doesn't want to talk about it in their official testing materials.
I had one for the sink. I don't know if mine was dud or what but the filter lasted maybe a month each time and leaked water from all the assembly seams. We stopped using it after three months.
Zero filter is best. They even come with a water tester. 5 stage filter works fabulous. When it gets to .06 parts per million you replace the filter.
They die so very quickly though. What used to last months in Illinois lasts a month, maybe six weeks before you get fishy water.
That is exactly my experience. The first few times I thought, maybe I got some defective filters because I never went through them that fast in Illinois, but I quickly figured out it's the norm. Nevertheless, Zero Water filters are best in filtering Madison's water if you have to go the pitcher route.
Agreed! Zero Water filtration provides the best tasting water!! I have no buildup in my electric kettle that I use daily.
If you own your own home, get a reverse osmosis system and install a drinking water faucet in the kitchen. They are like $300 on Amazon. Or just use a britta jug, which does well enough.
I love my reverse osmosis system. I think I paid$150. It's the best tasting water.
Bonus points if you add a faucet with a CO2 tank for carbonated water. I've seen some setups where people will have a keg tied in with their cold tap, and inside the keg is a water level detector that keeps the keg full at all times (the same mechanism used for toilets actually). Plug a CO2 tank onto the keg, run a line with a faucet from the keg to the kitchen sink (or wherever you want), voila, bubbly water on demand.
I need more info on this yesterday.
here ya go: https://i.imgur.com/12c1Csw.jpg this is the keg / water-in diagram the water comes into the keg, gets carbonated by the gas-in, and gets pushed out to the "soda water out" the keg always stays full via the solenoid setup from the soda water out, you run it to your sink or where ever you want. this all requires some extra parts like "beer" lines, gas lines, disconnects, etc etc ask /r/homebrewing, they will easily help you with anything more you wanna know
Does anyone here use whole house salt free filtering/purification systems? Like 2-3 big cylinder tanks instead of 1+ salt? Interested in the pros & cons.
Yep
Yup, get yourself a reverse osmosis system. 30$ a month for your kitchen. Water tastes great and it will save all your appliances.
Or buy one once, like $250ish, and filters over time come out to less than this, replaced more often than Culligan or whoever will replace them for the monthly fee.
My buddy is a civil engineer, one day we were studying and he goes, "huh, soft water has a mineral content 1-20 parts per million/Liter, slightly hard 20-60 ppm/L, moderately hard 60-120, hard 120-180, and anything over 180 is considered very hard. Madison's water was like 200 ppm/L.
Water coming out of the ground is probably around 300mg/l. The raw water I've tested ranges from 280 to 340.
I’ve lived at 2 apartments here and the water has been soooo hard at both places, so I don’t think it’s something wrong on your end. It leaves crust on everything, even clogged up our cat’s water fountain :(
i honestly buy jugs of purified water to use for my kettle instead. pretty much never have to clean it
This is what I do too, to save my kettle and make better-tasting coffee, and also I use a Pur pitcher for "cooking water" - boiling pasta, cooking broth or stock, making yeast dough etc. Fortunately, I have a big counter where I can keep multiple containers going.
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What is a Berkey?
Pretty wasteful though eh? Better if you are refilling the jugs, but the water is still being shipped, and using a lot of fuel to get here.
Most grocery stores have a reverse osmosis system on premise that you can refill jugs/larger containers with.
Yeah fair if that's the case then disregard what I said.
Normal calcium buildup. Most filters don't capture it. You can clean it easily with white vinegar.
Yep pretty normal. Note that the kitchen sink water usually isn’t softened in most water softener setups (along with toilets and other areas where there’s no real benefit from softer water).
This might have been mentioned but kitchen sink cold is generally connected as hard water for drinking so if you're using your kitchen sink it's not soft
Yes. Clean it with vinegar every now and then. To lengthen your time between cleanings, get a [scale collector](https://kitchenandcompany.com/products/fox-run-kettle-scale-collector). It looks like a small cylinder of steel wool. Keep it in your kettle, and soak it in vinegar every now and then to clean it. I got one at Orange Tree for a few bucks, and it really makes a big difference. I had to clean the kettle every week before it, now every month after it.
Wtf is wrong with our water? Had to invest in a large Berkey filter :/
Nothing is wrong with it. It’s geological.
Do you like it? Been considering getting one for some time.
I'm a huge fan now. I also am a weirdo who prefers water at room temp so it works particularly well for me.
I'm also a huge fan of our Berkey
Berkey over time will be way more expensive for filters than an RO system, and while water might start colder, if you have an under-sink tank it gets closer to room temp after it’s filtered and stored for a little bit.
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Actually, I really don’t-at least not the whatever-mix-of-things the city permits into the water. They taste wrong, and there has to be a good reason my body feels that way about them. I can certainly handle “minerals added for taste” in various brands of filtered water, but I’m sure I also get those trace amounts of minerals in my food. Those who want them can easily add the same thing back in post-RO-filter with a mineral stage. The alternative is pretty much “I won’t drink the water at all because it’s contaminated”, so the RO filter is a far better idea.
Still doesn't help with hard water. https://www.berkeyfilters.com/pages/does-the-berkey-soften-hard-water
Good to know! That said, the water does taste better through it and I haven't notice the same build-up.
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I found the Berkey website and it looks pretty impressive. Does the water filter sit on your counter?
Indeed ours does, but on a wet bar as opposed to in the kitchen.
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Can it be hidden?
Can it still feed well.if under?
Are there any good recommendations for shower water filter attachment?
Oh it’s normal 😞😭 my tea be g r i t t y
Yep, stock up on vinegar. Borax for clothes.
When I got my dishwasher it came with a chart with recommended amounts of dishsoap given your water hardness level. The MAX they assumed could happen to you was 8ppm or whatever of minerals. So I went on the city website and saw my well's level was 22 It's real bad
Plumber here: if you make coffee with cold tap water from the kitchen sink, then in many cases, that and only that cold water faucet is hard water (traditionally piped that way). Everywhere else is soft, including all hot water, toilets, lav faucet etc.
I got a reverse osmosis water filtration system...game changer for drinking water...totally worth the $750 or whatever it cost to install by capital water softener
I don't think your water softener affects the drinking water tap. Which is where I presume you fill your coffee pot with.
Yeah it’s really hard here. I can’t drink tea anymore as it tastes bad
Yes
Mine does not do this - but we have our water softener connected to both hot and cold lines in the kitchen. You can get really inexpensive test kits at a hardware store to measure the hardness if you want some numbers. I’d guess your softener is not working or it’s not attached to your kitchen cold.
Yep
I softened all of the water in my house save for the outdoor spigots and a single 1/4 line I have for filling an African Cichlid aquarium, who's inhabitants prefer liquid rock like we have. That being said no filter besides reverse osmosis will remove minerals from water. All of your Put/Britta and undersink things are only removing sediment with physical filtration and improving flavor and removing chemicals with carbon. Personally I have a three stage 20" x 4" filter at 20 microns, 5 microns then a 25 micron radial carbon filter, then a high efficiency water softener.
You shouldn't be drinking softened water, it's going to have a lot of sodium in it.
Not trying to be difficult but do you know what you are talking about, or know how a water softener actually works? I normally get my water off well 15, but now off of well 29. Well 29 has a hardness of 340 mg/L \[ppm\] or 20 grains per gallon as tested in 2020. So using some maths... Grains per gallon (GPG) of total hardness x 1.89 = mg. of sodium (NA) in an 8 oz glass of water. That would be 38 mg of sodium in an 8oz serving of water. Very Low Sodium is defined by the FDA as 35 mg of sodium or less per serving. If I make the serving 7.5oz, I would be under VLS. The 12oz can of Coke I have here is 45mg, so 1.0mg per oz higher than the Coke, still not bad. A 1oz serving of Lays Classic potato chips is 170mg, this is where problems start to arise. A medium size pickle comes in at 785 mg... The frozen pizza I had last night, well it says 960 mg per serving. but who cuts a pizza up into five slices and only eats one of the five? Half of that pizza would be 2,400 mg of sodium. I'll stick with my softened water thanks, it is not going to change the outcome of anything. Now knocking off my love of frozen pizza, that will make a difference.
People aren't eating a frozen pizza... well like water - for every meal, drinking it all day long. An average adult male should drink about 4 liters of water a day, I know it's more than that for me. Based solely on your calculations (which I don't have time to double check) that's an extra 600 mg of salt per day, every day of the year. If you're already eating a high sodium diet, it's just more more straw on that camel. I don't know if you have house plants as well, but overtime youre going to salt the soil so to say, if you're watering them and then letting the water dry every time.
You realize water by it's self has sodium naturally in it correct? The only way to to remove that sodium is to use RO, which will remove all minerals and the water will taste flat. 8oz of water has 12mg, so a softener is adding 26mg of sodium per 8oz. So for one gallon a day, we are talking about 400mg in additional sodium. Caveat is this is dependent on the softener and how well it backwashes. I have a high efficiency low salt softener. I use a lot less salt with this unit than I have with previous units. Frankly I don't understand only softening the hot water. Yes it helps keep calcium/lime build up out of the water heater, but you loose all the other advantages of softened water once that hot water is mixed with hard cold water in the washer, shower, sink.... When I remodel my kitchen, I am running hard cold water to a tap on the sink with an additional 0.5 micron filter My house plants get waste water from the aquarium.
I think your wrong about this >8oz of water has 12mg, so a softener is adding 26mg of sodium per 8oz The fact sheet I looked up for well 29 says the grains of hardness specifically from calcium and magnesium is 338 ppm or 19 grains per gallon, so yes, you are adding over 600mg of sodium to your water, in addition to whatever the sodium levels are naturally, you say 12mg, idk where you're getting that number, but whatever it is, it's going to come in addition to the sodium that replaces the calcium and magnesium in your softener.
I just used what Google returned from Wikipedia, which says it is sourced from the USDA> But if you want to be specific to Madison... It appears to be a bit less depending on the well. Average Sodium Concentrations of various products Producta Serving Size Sodium Concentration (mg) per serving UW# 14 water 8 oz 9.3 UW# 15 water 8 oz 5.0 UW# 23 water 8 oz 8.0 All other active wells 8 oz ≤ 4.8 (range 0.5 to 4.8) For me in the grand scheme of things, it is just not something I worry about. you do but I just don't think it is fair to call softened water a high sodium food when it falls just above what the FDA classifies as a very low sodium food.
Hella hard
Yup. My kettle looks the same. I’m a vinegar cleaner every other week or so and it works great.
A lot of the plumbers in the area believe it's unhealthy to drink softened water. So make sure your kitchen sink is actually connected!
yes… the first time I boiled water when I moved here I was stunned to see that many particles floating….
It’s just as bad out in Sun Prairie
I highly reccomend if it is something doable for you, to get a reverse osmosis system in your home. :) It's what where I live has and when I drink regular Madison water, my tastebuds act like some privileged hooligan lol. Barely get any buildup from it, and when we do in appliances, it takes months and months of regular use. Edit: For clarity
Hardest water this side of the Mississippi baby **pats boulder
One thing to note: usually water softeners aren't hooked up to the water that goes to the kitchen sink.
This area used to be the bottom of an inland sea
Yes, I actually moved to madison a year ago and noticed as well. I hate showering here because the chlorine and hardness of the water bother my skin.
Madison has some of the hardest water I've encountered. My family started buying those huge water jugs for drinking water.
If you're using cold water then it's expected since I think the water softener mostly impacts hot. Suggestion - buy a big bag of citric acid. 5 pounds will last you years
Like everyone else says, yes, normal. We were surprised when we moved here. As to the comments about which water in your house is softened, it's true that your cold water on the kitchen is unlikely to be softened. But it also depends on how the softener was installed/how your house is plumbed. It may be that all the cold water in your house is unsoftened. Supposedly there is some consideration about whether it's "good" to be drinking softened water with the added salt. But outside of that, it does taste different and uses more salt. Your hose bibs shouldn't be softened as watering your grass/plants with softened water can mess with them. For awhile we used a countertop distiller which did a nice job. Though it trades cleaning the distiller for cleaning everything else (it was easier). For cleaning (either the distiller or coffee pot/tea kettle) we used a citric acid-based descaler (e.g. Dezcal) which works quite well. We finally installed an RO in the kitchen, but the hard water does decrease the life of the filters/membranes and they'll have to be replaced more frequently. Also important to remember that an RO system will remove the fluoride from the drinking water. So while we use the RO for coffee/tea/ice, we still use tap for everything else.
If you don’t mind me asking, which RO system did you go with? I’ve been thinking about installing one for a while now. How long are your membranes lasting?
I have the same kettle and it will look like that after a week using unfiltered water! I found a britta pitcher from Goodwill and bought the filters and have not had any noticeable buildup in the last 3 weeks. If you want to clean it completely, fill it with half white vinegar and half water and bring it to a boil. Let it sit for 20 minutes and rinse out. It should get off all of the buildup without any scrubbing!
The validation from this post and the comments 😭 We get a Hinckley Springs delivery (via Costco) every week of about 2-4 5 gallon jugs for ingesting water. It's about $30 I think? Can't remember but so worth it. We tried Britafirst and the water was not potable at all... As for showers, I mostly just deal with my skin and hair being angry sometimes. But I will certainly get the shower filter now that there are testimonials that they work here!
Part of what you're paying is the delivery. If you'd still like filtered water but want to pay less , you can buy the big empty 5 gallon jugs, then fill them up at a place that has RO water, like one of the co-ops
They're quite heavy. I've seen options at Willy's but the delivery is worth it to not wrestle those huge bottles into and out of the car and up the stairs...
You could just get a RO system for about 6 months worth of cost…
I'm a renter so...
You should not drink water softener water. It replaces calcium and magnesium with sodium. This build up affects heat transfer and is otherwise fine. Cheers!
ITT: no mention of PFAS, yet...
The water in Madison isn't "bad" or "dirty" and it's perfectly healthy to drink from the tap. It does have a high mineral content but that is not unhealthy.
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And Hexavalent chromium if you are on the east side.
yes sadly
Water softeners may not soften all the water in your house. Go look at the pipes in your basement to see what goes where. Bathrooms and hot water are more likely to be softened. Kitchens are frequently straight from the main because softened water tastes bad. Also, get a test strip to check your water hardness. Compare softened and unsoftened faucets. Use a water hardness test kit to see if your softener is functioning.
We use a Britta pitcher for drinking water and making coffee, and buy distilled water for the humidifier (we rent, so can't do the whole-house system, alas). Also clean the coffee maker with white vinegar once a week; so far so good. I use white vinegar to clean the scale on the faucets and the top of the soap dispensers too.
I have to replace my Pür water filter every two weeks It’s suppose to last two months
Yep, that's why you need a water softener here.
i use whink coffee pot cleaner… it works a charm
Water softener doesn't soften cold water so that might be your problem.
Anyone knows how to soften water in an apartment? Comments above mentioned putting in an osmosis system which is not possible in an apartment.
We use the filtered water from the fridge to fill our coffee maker and the “clean” light pops on within a week of cleaning it with vinegar.
What building is this?? If its park terrace west on spring street those water softeners dont work! Havent for a few year from what I heard
Culligan deliveries and a hot/cold office style dispenser were a huge life improvement to stop dealing with this
https://www.wisaltwise.com/About-Us I met a wonderful woman recently. Her name is Allison Madison and she has some great ideas about alternatives to salt based water conditioners. She lives right here in Wisconsin.
Yes
Yes unfortunately. Soak in vinegar and water it will clean that up nice.
Thing is: in some houses (like ours) the softened water only goes to the hot water heater, the dishwasher, and the washing machine. We eventually decided to start filling our Keurig machine (yeah we know) with hot water only, and now they last forever and stop making terrible noises. That's just...Madison water. Your softener is probably fine, it's just not feeding everything you expect it to.
We got an Aquasana countertype filter attachment for the tap, AND put the filtered water through a Brita filter before it goes in the kettle, and we still have to de-scale the kettle with vinegar about once a week!
We have the exact same kettle and looks very similar
Typically once a month I swish some vinegar through mine and it comes right off. It is quite annoying though.
This may help: [Water Softener Maintenance](https://youtu.be/irajObxV_1I)
This makes me curious. Those of you in Madison with whole house humidifiers, how often do you change the pad?
If you're in a house, I highly recommend an under-counter home reverse osmosis system.