What is hard water? Text

If you live in Arizona, your water is “hard.” That means it contains dissolved minerals like calcium and magnesium. How “hard” your water is depends on how many grains of the minerals it contains per gallon. This is called grains per gallon, or GPG.

Water that contains more than 1 GPG is considered somewhat “hard”; water with more than 10.5 GPG is very hard. A typical glass of Arizona water has at least 15 GPG!

The solution: Soften your hard water by installing a water softener. That device, which costs between $400 and $5,000 (depending on how large your house is, the quality of the equipment and whether you hire a pro to install it), will replace calcium and magnesium ions in your water with sodium ions, which do not react badly with soap or cause lime scale to form on pipes.

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