Okay, if soft water is widely considered to be a significant cause of heart disease, what's the simplest way of hardening a supply of drinking water in a domestic situation where the supply is naturally very soft?
Tim
I thought it was only artificially softened water that some consider unhealthy.
And what is "naturally softened" water?
There is, I presume, no such thing. But there is naturally soft water.
Add minerals!
As this is DIY: There is a "mineral water calculator".
One makes mineral solutions, using (checks): Plaster of Paris, Epsom salt, Chalk, Baking soda, Table salt, Milk of magnesia, Slaked lime.
Then enter the analysis of your tap water in a spreadsheet, available form your water supplier in many cases. Then select, for example, a precocious mineral water from the lower Himalayas rich in salty tones, and the spreadsheet tells you how much of what to add (or if your tap water already contains too much of a mineral to get there from here).
Carbonation is an extra step.
Article, link to spreadsheet near the bottom:
Alternatively, usenet participants can scape the kettle fur from their kettles, water heaters, and bathroom tiles, and mail it to less fortunate participants.... (This may require some carbonic acid to dissolve the minerals.)
Thomas Prufer
Well the Thames Water people have this figured out. They store the water in a gigantic concrete pipe that goes around |London and all the cement dissolves into the water...:-) I'm not too sure whether I believe that soft water is a problem in of itself myself. We have after all had variably hard or soft water for as long as the human has been around. Brian
Is the issue that water that has been softened by an ion exchanger tends to have more sodium in it, whereas naturally soft water doesn't?
It is generally accepted that hard water is better for you and contains magnesium and other minerals etc:
BBC NEWS | Health | Hard water 'stops heart attacks' news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3396141.stm
15 Jan 2004 - Drinking hard water may protect against heart disease, researchers have claimed. ... Your news when you want it ... They found for every unit increase in water hardness, there was a 1% decrease in the risk of having a further ...
The theory is that an excess of sodium ions (as opposed to calcium ones) in artificially softened water is as had as eating a packet of crisps every hour, although the amount of sodium in a pint of softened water is about the same as in one crisp, never mind the whole packet.
i.e. there are three sorts of water: Naturally soft = no carbonates. Hard = calcium carbonates. Softened = sodium carbonates.
I have a fourth:
softened using a reverse osmosis filter and then through ion exchange resin.
Nowt in it.
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