It's Official, Shaving has Driven Me Insane.

[Foyle]

We live in an apartment building with a water softener. It's so nice to have a water softener when you live in an area with hard water. On Sunday I noticed that the water seemed to go hard. Soap didn't seem to rinse off as well, and my lather didn't develop as quickly or with as much volume as previously. On Monday I noticed the same thing, so I called the apartment manager. She said she'd check it out. Fast forward to today, and I was still noticing the same issues. I decided to call the manager again and ask about the water softener. She said that it seemed to be working just fine, that it was using salt, that the assistant manager has to re-load it with salt every few days, and everything checked out ok. She also mentioned that no one else in the building had called about the issue.

So, that's good enough for me. If the system is using salt, and no one else is complaining, it must be working. But here's the thing. I can tell the difference. The water is definitely harder than it was before. It's not the liquid nails type of water we had at the old place, but it's harder than it has been. Wet shaving has turned me into a freak. I'm the only one that can tell the difference in how hard the water is. Thank you all very much. I blame you!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some wind mills to joust.

​

 

[Kerrplunk]

Join the club! I have the hardest of hard water. Strangely it's never been an issue up until I started
to wet shave.

 

[xxvaleria]

Maybe you're just the canary in the coal mine.

 

[DFSDAILY]

Maybe they changed to a cheaper brand of salt that doesn't work as well?

 

[aimsport]

Once you have truly soft water you can tell when you don't.

A softener consuming salt does NOT mean the resin is working. The resin of the softener can get clogged by other minerals and metals that the salt does not free up. Iron is one example, where you need a product like Iron Out. Not all salts are equal. Morton System Saver II available at many Sams clubs can fix many softener problems.

Also, a toilet could have developed a leak (put a drop of food coloring in the tank and see if it shows up in the bowl overnight), or there is some increase in water usage in another apartment that is exceeding the capacity of the softener.

If power went out recently the clock could be wrong and the softener is not allowed to do its job because of water usage while it's trying to put salt through the resin.

Consider measuring the hardness. In the meantime, use more product.

Hope you soon get that soft-water explosion of lather/shampoo/hand soap you've gotten used to.

 

[Icebear]

Unless you have water sample analyzed on a weekly bases, preferably by a certified lab, you can't prove that the water is harder now.
Just trying to explain that the lathering is not on the same level, will just have someone shaking his/her head .
Go fightin' those 'mills, get 'em Foyle, get 'em !

 

[davizera]

That's one of the things I miss about Brazil, before coming to Israel I had no idea what was hard water. The first time I saw the scale build up on my kettle I couldn't understand what was that, it took me 1 week to really know what was that.
The shampoo and ordinary soap that I brought from there (long time ago) didn't work at all. One bath soap that lasted me 3 or 4 days in Brazil started to last 2 weeks here.

I've started wet shaving here, and I only dream of going to a place that has water as soft as in Brazil. I think that in Israel we have the hardest water in the world, or one of the hardest.

I remember back in Brazil that I had a Espresso machine, it was italian and came with a descaler, I just couldn't understand what that was for! The water there is incredibly soft. I'm even thinking of using a pitcher with a filter exclusively to my shaving routines.

I have just found out that the water in Brazil has, on average, 48 ppm of CaCO3.

In Israel:

"Normally, water is classified as "soft" when its hardness is below 60 ppm as
CaCO3, as "moderately hard" when its hardness is 61-120 ppm as CaCO3, as
"hard" when its hardness is 121-180 ppm as CaCO3, and as "very hard" when
its hardness is above 181 ppm as CaCO3.

With water supplies ranging typically between 250 and 350 ppm as CaCO3,
and in some population centers, during certain periods of the year, exceeding
even 600 ppm as CaCO3, all the known problems associated with such
extremely hard water have been experienced by Israeli households and
industry. "

 

[ShaveYourSoul]

I could be wrong, but I think shallow aquifer water hardness is affected by seasonal changes. So it could be that the salt usage is the same, but the overall hardness is up. Maybe you aren't so crazy?

 

[4freek]

I personally don't like soft water, for some reason soft water leaves me with a feeling that the soap is not washing off.
With hard water when you rinse you know you've rinsed.
I don't have any problems lathering any soap I've tried, (well maybe one gave me a hard time)

 

[deruitem]

I dont think we have hard water but I have been meaning to test it. We do get the calcium deposits on things if we dont keep an eye on it though

 

[Foyle]

I personally don't like soft water, for some reason soft water leaves me with a feeling that the soap is not washing off.
With hard water when you rinse you know you've rinsed.
I don't have any problems lathering any soap I've tried, (well maybe one gave me a hard time)

That feeling is the feeling of clean. That's what it feels like when the soap actually is rinsed off thoroughly.

 

[SantoSubito]

You name it and we have it in our well water; calcium, iron, arsenic, sulfur, and chromium are all there. Weirdly I've never had any trouble with lather.

 

[Spotlit]

Foyle, maybe you need a new B&B tag , like "Lather Quixote".

 

[jzuzphreek]

Consider measuring the hardness. In the meantime, use more product.

Single best response to any post I've seen today!

YHMV...

 

[aar0n]

This won't help measure hardness, but you can definitely test the amount of salt in your water

 

[rockviper]

We play hockey on hard water here in Canada!

 

[CUSE69]

We play hockey on hard water here in Canada!

And in the summer if it softens you fish and swim in it.

 

[CUSE69]

Regarding the water softener, if it is a sophisticated unit that monitors the conductivity of the water to determine the need to regenerate with a salt solution then using the normal salt amount would suggest the water quality leaving the unit would be within the control limits (assuming all else is operating normally).
If the unit is controlled by a timer and regenerates based on a fixed time or cycle or a certain volume of treated water then an increase in the input water hardness could indeed result in overloading the ion exchange resin resulting in water hardness above the usual level. Water hardness in lakes and rivers can indeed change with the seasons as there is an inverse relationship between water temperature and solubility of calcium salts with colder water having higher solubility (containing more hardness). Most well water would exhibit less change in hardness across the seasons. Also with a fixed regeneration cycle based on time, higher use of the soft water could result in exceeding the capacity of the resin and reduction of the mineral removal, i.e. less soft water leaving the unit.

There are any number of other issues that could be effecting the softener. There could be channeling of flow through the resin bed, contamination of the resin with a biofilm or a cation such as iron that is more difficult to removed from the resin during regeneration, malfunction of the hardware that controls the valve switching needed for regeneration, backflow, and rinse cycles to name just a few.

Sorry if this is more than you ever wanted to know about water softners, I worked with industrial units early in my career.

If needed you can purchased distilled water for about $1/gallon in most grocery stores to use for making lather, it will behave like softened water.