By Alexis Grace
For our better health, it is necessary that we must get good source of water. Often hard water supply at home may be the reason for many different health problems, especially if you notice water scale around your drains, faucets and showerheads. Also, another disadvantage of hard water is your soap may not produce enough lather.
Therefore, often people try to compare water conditioner vs water softener while deciding to install at their home and get confused.
In this article, we shall try to highlight the difference between them so that it can help you to make better choice.
What is water conditioner?
Water conditioner is a product that is designed for improving the water quality. As an example, water conditioners can remove chlorine for enhancing the water taste. There are 3 common varieties of water conditioner:
- Carbon filtration
In this kind of conditioner, activated carbon is used for absorbing unwanted chemicals and compounds out of water. Odour will be removed with carbon filtration and also chlorine/sulphur taste that will make water better for cooking, drinking or bathing.
- Magnetic water conditioners
Such magnetic or electric water conditioners are meant for disrupting salt and various scale build ups with the help of agitation of molecules by using electrical force.
Electrical energy will prevent calcium/magnesium to get stick to the pipes and other water fixtures. This is quite inexpensive option but scientific community is not very much in its favour.
- Catalytic media conditioners
Often it is also referred as salt-free water softener as these conditioners do not remove minerals by chemical ion exchange. Instead, a physical approach known as template-assisted crystallization is used.
They in fact turn minerals into hard crystals which cannot stick to any surface and cause build-up of a soap scum.
They may be useful but technically they do not soften water by removing calcium and magnesium but just condition all those ions into less harmful forms.
What is water softener?
A water softener is a type of water conditioner which is are intended for removing magnesium/calcium ion from your home water. Due to these ions there will be build up on your dishes and appliances and you may need more soap while washing hands.
Any salt-based water softener can remove hard minerals out of water and then exchanges them by sodium particles.
Benefits of water conditioner over water softener
Your water conditioner can improve smell and taste of water, and will eliminate few negative effects of the hard water.
As few water conditioners may leave mineral traces in the water, so people may still notice problems while lathering. Water softeners on the other hand are more expensive, however they can thoroughly remove minerals from water.
