Softening hard water

[chicken neck]

Decided this morning to see if using soft water made any difference to my shave.

So boiled just over a litre of Evian and soaked my brush in a mixture of the boiling Evian and room temperature Evian (to prevent wrecking my lovely brush). Then put a teaspoon of boiling Evian on my puck of soap and showered (not in boiling Evian!) When I came to lather up, the lather seemed to develop almost immediately (without any effort whatsover). To be totally consistent, I even used boiling Evian in the sink to dip my razor. That was a bit of hassle though because I didnt really have enough water to rinse my face between passes.

Conclusion: well the lather did seem much easier to make than normal and the shave may have been slightly closer than normal, but it was a bit more hassle (especially the fact that I could not rinse between passes which I do like to do). I am wondering if instead there are ways to soften the water that comes out of the tap (apart from fitting a mains water softener). I have heard that you can just add Borax to the water, but isn't Borax toxic? Presumably, not great then to massage into your face!

Anybody else got any ideas / views on this?

 

[Pig Cat]

The water that is softened by a water softener is not advisable to drink. We have a separate tap by our kitchen sink that is un-softened - straight from the mains. This we use for drinking, cooking etc. Wouldn't kill you to drink it but I think over time it is not great. Worth a Google to check things out. I would, but busy at the mo what with a wedding to go to later!! :hungrig :lol:

 

[henkverhaar]

Short of fitting a water softener somewhere in your water supply mains, I can't think of any useful way to soften water. And, as also recommended by your (and probably our) goverment (not that I trust government one bit, but this is scientifically sound advice), softening your drinking water supply is probably not a particularly healthy choice -- you DO need those minerals in your drinking water. In that case you'd need two separate water supplies, one for household use and one for drinking. Or put a water softener on, or just before, selected taps only.

Not a reasonable solution, I would say.

What you could, at least in theory, do, is add water softeners to your shaving water. There are many chemicals to choose from (etidronic acid, pentetic acid, EDTA, to name a few), but those are generally not available to the general public. One exception would be the stuff you can buy to add to your laundry detergent to keep the heating element of your washing machine from scaling up; sold under the Calgon (ever wondered where that name came from ?) brand over here. I haven't looked closely at the ingredients, but I'm not sure I would want to put that in my shaving water.

That leaves either using bottled, boiled, or distilled water, or using a shaving soap with enough scavengers to counteract the effects of your hard water.

Note that boiling water for a few minutes deposits most of the calcium and magnesium salts in the water on the surface of the boiling vessel, making the water a lot softer too (this is why tea kettles develop scale also; this can be controlled with these wire mesh contraptions you can put in your tea kettle -- for some reason, most of the scale then deposits on this contraption rather than on the inside of the kettle.

I would recommend finding a soap with enough 'water softeners' built in, and changing to boiled (tap) water if that doesn't help.

Henk

 

[hunnymonster]

The water that is softened by a water softener is not advisable to drink. We have a separate tap by our kitchen sink that is un-softened - straight from the mains. This we use for drinking, cooking etc. Wouldn't kill you to drink it but I think over time it is not great. Worth a Google to check things out. I would, but busy at the mo what with a wedding to go to later!! :hungrig :lol:

Basically softened water is a sodium rich cocktail - so counts against the 3 grains of salt that apparently is too much for us all to consume. As PC says, not an emergency if you have the odd one - but over time you run the risks associated with a high sodium diet.

 

[antdad]

Chicken, I think you have discovered that it is actually more trouble than it's worth.
I've always thought that lathering with hard water is just something you have to adapt to, use more soap and adjust your'e technique or just move to Wales. :shock:

 

[Pete]

I bought some water for topping up batteries, steam irons etc and made some lather using that. It was a bit better but not worth the hassle of heating it up every time I shave. I'd rather buy more soap.