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The Benefits of a Water Softener Without the Use of Salt – A True Purification Approach.

Article by Larry Couture

Untreated hard water will result in lousy laundry, spotted dishware and no soap results in the shower. In addition, calcium build up will ruin the fixtures, shorten appliance life and ultimately ruin the plumbing in the home. Everyone with hard water knows these issues, few understand there are non-salt options.

For 50 years the debate has been whether Mpls. based Lindsay Miracle Water (now ECO Water) or his MN competition Bill Culligan invented water softening. Water softening is the ion exchange of sodium for calcium resulting in no calcium in the water and some level of sodium. The discharge of the byproduct water is brine which has come under growing scrutiny since the late 1980's. Chloride discharge regulations have been instituted in both large county districts such as Los Angeles County or Livingston County in Michigan and small municipalities.

The sodium going forward has drawn the scrutiny of the Mayo Clinic and removal of the calcium hardness itself by the government of Finland. Sodium and soft water even without softening are risk items for circulatory system issues such as blood pressure and stroke.

People's health and environmental awareness along with the internet as a research tool, have drawn more consumers to seek a non-salt water treatment option. Ionization and oxygenation systems use a natural oxygen and ionic copper to revert calcium carbonate (CACO3) to calcium bicarbonate (CA2H(CO3)). Iron is oxidized by the oxygen allowing a filter to remove the iron from the water without the use of chemicals or salt, a major break thru in well water treatment.

"I think Yahoo science and Stanford University legitimized these systems by defining calcium bicarbonate in 2001," said Mike Dewar, a regional manager in the water treatment industry.

"We still fight some chemical engineers and professors who refuse to believe bicarbonate calcium exists. They got their PHD's before 1980."

Bicarbonate calcium tests are now required on new wells in Canada and EPA approved testing methods in the US are now available to demonstrate water hardness as permanent or temporary. Culligan Los Angeles and Watercheck in Cleveland, OH are two leading sources for the bicarbonate test.

Instead of hard scale, bicarbonate calcium will leave a dry powder residue, easily wiped away without chemicals. Dewar adds that the root electrolysis used in these systems was developed by NASA and first used in the Apollo Space Program and the low level copper ions are healthy to humans and effective against mold. While the ionization was used to control scale in the Apollo cooling systems, no scientific evidence that why the ionization worked for scale control exists.

"The other major benefit is the residual bacteria control, which becomes important if you filter out the chlorine of city water or recognize a high percentage of wells develop Coliform through the natural ecosystem," Dewar continued.