Earlier we discussed options for water softeners in your homes, today we want to go a bit further on the topic of water treatment and the many options available to you. Depending on your area, the equipment already in your home, and the minerals in your water there are specific water treatment solutions for you.

The most common method to treat water is demineralization through ion exchange. In this process, hard water enters a storage tank (a water softener) water then passes through a membrane or across tiny resin beads that attract hard minerals and remove them from the water. Once the process is compete the soft water then enters the home. Once the resin in the softener reaches full capacity for hard minerals the system must be regenerated. This means that a brine solution is pumped through the resin tank and the minerals are flushed from the tank into an attached drain, before the softening process can begin again. Like ion exchange another popular water treatment option is a whole home filter. The process by which a whole home filters works is through water filtration, water passes across a membrane and filters out any contaminants and minerals providing clean filtered water for your entire home. A very uncommon water treatment option is distillation, this method delivers high purity water by evaporation and leaving the minerals behind and using condensation from the resulting steam to create the high purity water. This process is not used all that frequently because a significant amount of energy is required and for most people water that is distilled has a flat taste since is has no minerals. In most circumstances distilled water is used for ironing, aquariums, and topping off car batteries. Lastly, Reverse Osmosis is one of the most common water treatment methods as it is used in commercial and residential applications. The process for reverse osmosis require that water pass through a membrane which does not allow a high percentage of dissolved solids in the water to pass through.