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What ever you get...stay away from Kinetico's or saltless systems. Kinetico's are $$ and add little value over any other water softener. As for saltless systems...bunk.
Hard water and shaving
- Thread starter SUNA
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Hard water definitely causes build up. I use Neutrogena residue-free shampoo to clean my brushes. Works great and is nice and gentle on the hair. Amazing how much better they lather after a good cleaning. Hair goes from crusty and stiff (relatively) to soft and smooth.
Hi Dewaine,
The science is simple really. Hard water has Ca and Mg in it...It reacts with soap to form a sticky scum, and also reduces the soap's ability to lather. Since most of us like to wash with soap, hard water makes a bath or shower less productive. The solution to hard water is either to filter the water by distillation or reverse osmosis (RO) to remove the calci.um and magnesium, or to use a water softener. Filtration would be extremely expens.ive to use for all the water in a house, so a water softener is usually a less costly solution.
The idea behind a water softener is simple. The calcium and magnesium ions in the water are replaced with sodium ions. Since sodium does not prec.ipitate out in pipes or react badly with soap, both of the problems of hard water are eliminated. To do the ion replacement, the water in the house runs through a bed of small plastic beads or through a chemical matrix called zeolite. The beads or zeolite are covered with sodium ions. As the water flows past the sodium ions, they swap places with the calcium and magnesium ions. Eventually, the beads or zeolite contain nothing but calcium and magnesium and no sodium, and at this point they stop softening the water. It is then time to regenerate the beads or zeolite.
Regeneration involves soaking the beads or zeolite in a stream of sodium ions. Salt is NaCl, so the water softener mixes up a very strong brine solution and flushes it through the zeolite or beads (this is why you load up a water softener with salt). The strong brine displaces all of the calcium and magnesium that has built up in the zeolite or beads and replaces it again with sodium. The remaining brine plus all of the calcium and magnesium is flushed out through a drain pipe.
Hope this helps (in a simple way)
Cheers,
Robert
Your everyday gentle dishwashing detergent (Dawn, Palmolive, etc...) works equally well. This is what I do (every 2 months or so) when cleaning my brush (using distilled water)
1. Do a Borax wash (2-3 minutes) - similar to baking Soda, it softens the water and exchanges the Ca/Mg ions in the insoluble/precipitated soap (from shaving cremes etc...) and makes them soluble
2. Wash with detergent - I even use a soft toothbrush (gently) to get in the knot area and loosen up the crud
3. Use leave-in hair conditioner (2-3 minutes) - This conditions the bristles...Pantene (or something similar my wife has) works fine for this. Rub it in nice.
4. Wash in 20% Vinegar (2-3 minutes) - make a ~20% solution of vinegar (white vinegar from grocery store). I also add a few drops of glycerin to this to moisturize/soften the bristles. Put the brush in it and agitate occasionally.
5. Wash in plain water - I do this with distilled water to get the vinegar out.
6. Soak in a Glycerin/Lavender solution (optional) - I add a few drops of Glycerin (~1ml) to a cup of water and add a few drops of lavender essential oil and soak my brush in it for 5 minutes. Your brush will be soft and smell great too.
Cheers,
Robert
Eh, I lather with the shampoo, let it soak a bit and then rinse it out. Worked fine so far for me.
I second this post!
Have you tried Col Conk or Van Der Hagen? Both these shaving "soaps" are in fact detergent/soap hybrids. The detergent content makes them much more tolerant of hard water than "normal" soaps are. This may not be quite what you are after in the long-term, but in the meantime, trying one of these soaps could be worth a go.
Robert,
The flow of water is the same, at least as far as I can tell. The R.O. system, from what I have been told, should not be installed on the soft water loop. Something about clogging the filters and R.O. membrane faster.
The flow of water is the same, at least as far as I can tell. The R.O. system, from what I have been told, should not be installed on the soft water loop. Something about clogging the filters and R.O. membrane faster.
That's absolutely true Brian...I was thinking RO before soft water system. But, if I have DI (distilled) system, I wouldn't need the soft system
. I guess my method is a bit of an overdoRobert
I lived in one place that we bought Distilled/ Bottled water from the store by the gallon to use because the water was so hard Ivory soap would hardly sud up.
I beleive there is some science behind this. My understanding (and being no Scientist I stand to be proved wrong!) is that it increases the Sodium levels in the water in the form Sodium Bi-Carbinate. This has the affect of buffering the alkalinity (KH) of the water and softening it. That my theory anway!
