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How Do Water Softeners Work?

Water Softening

How Do Water Softeners Work?

How Do Water Softeners Work?

Updated: February 24, 2023 October 13, 2015

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Updated: February 24, 2023

Published: October 13, 2015

You may have begun to notice the effects of hard water around the house. What you may not quite understand is how exactly a water softening systems works to rid your home of these problems. The simplest answer is: Water softeners soften hard water, leaving you with better-quality water that can extend the life of your appliances, cut energy costs, and reinvigorate your hair and nails.

But that’s just the beginning.

How Water Softeners Work

Hard water contains a high concentration of the minerals calcium and magnesium, which can manifest in visible problems throughout your home, including difficulty rinsing soaps and detergents, stiff laundry, reduced appliance efficiency, and dry skin and dull, lifeless hair.
To soften hard water, resin beads within the softener system filter out these minerals from the water. As hard water enters your home, it flows through the water softener and the resin within the system filters out hard water minerals, removing them from the water. The softened water then leaves the water softening system to flow through the plumbing all around your home.
To keep the system performing consistently, allowing your water softener to continually remove hardness and provide softened water throughout your home, it needs to be regularly flushed free of the minerals left behind during the softening cycle – a process called regeneration.
During a regeneration cleaning cycle, a brine solution is used to clean the resin tank, exchanging sodium for hard water minerals. The brine and hard water minerals are flushed from the tank, leaving the resin beads within the water softening system refreshed and ready to continue eliminating hard water from your home.

Your local Culligan Water expert can help you decide which of our water softening systems is right for your home. For more information about how a water softener could work in your home, contact us today .