What's a Cheap and Easy Way to Harden Water?

[Whisky]

I’ll be traveling through your area in the next 5-6 weeks. I’ll bring you 5 gallons of our well water. We live outside Indianapolis and the area is known to have some of the hardest water in the country. Of course you will also get some iron, other trace minerals, and possibly bacteria and arsenic too.

 

[Ivo4u2]

Just for the sake of experimenting would it make sense just to take a few empty jugs and go to the nearest fresh water spring and just fill up a few and add some iodine tablets to kill off anything and try a few shaves to see if it makes any difference or better yet have a few shaves there while its nice out. Just thinking out loud.

I would simply boil it over but check how hard the water is before lugging it around. To give you an idea we have a region in the Netherlands where the water is so soft that they have to add lime to prevent it dissolving the copper pipes and damage to life and plants

 

[Dovo1695]

I tried out a half tablespoon of baking soda with a about a cup of water. No effect that I could tell. Bubbles and lather everywhere. I'm going to try to up the dose. I was using Mogno, and it occurred to me that this is probably a poor choice, because many mass market soaps (Arko, Tabac, etc) have added chemicals that help them lather in hard water.

Tomorrow I'll use Stirling with 50ml of water, and a teaspoon of baking soda, and a synthetic brush. If that doesn't work, I'll start adding in magnesium too (Epsom salt).

 

[Ivo4u2]

I tried out a half tablespoon of baking soda with a about a cup of water. No effect that I could tell. Bubbles and lather everywhere. I'm going to try to up the dose. I was using Mogno, and it occurred to me that this is probably a poor choice, because many mass market soaps (Arko, Tabac, etc) have added chemicals that help them lather in hard water.

Tomorrow I'll use Stirling with 50ml of water, and a teaspoon of baking soda, and a synthetic brush. If that doesn't work, I'll start adding in magnesium too (Epsom salt).

I never had issues with stirling electric sheep traveling in Asia with lots of hard water around.

 

[FarmerTan]

• Use a water distiller to process a few gallons of regular water, but stop distilling 3/4 of the way through. Use the distillate for some other purpose like your car battery or radiator. Shave with the residual water that did not get distilled. You will have concentrated the minerals the water originally had.
• Get some well water from Western Pennsylvania, Northern Ohio, Southeast Michigan, etc.!

​

Lol'd at the water in Michigan!

I'd gladly ship you some of mine, but it'll have to be from the garden hose now. The War Department allocated funds for a water softener awhile back!

Side benefit: my shaves are better, AND....so are my kidney stones!

 

[BigJ]

If you want to mineralize water go to a health store and ask mineral drops.

want to control the hardness of water… go to a pond aquarium shop they have both test kits and drops to soften or harden carbonate hardness

some people with koi ponds add clay powder

Great suggestions!!

 

[BigJ]

Lol'd at the water in Michigan!

I'd gladly ship you some of mine, but it'll have to be from the garden hose now. The War Department allocated funds for a water softener awhile back!

Side benefit: my shaves are better, AND....so are my kidney stones!

Any no one wants kidney stones!!

 

[FarmerTan]

Any no one wants kidney stones!!

I have a VERY select few folks I have wished them on in the past, LOL! Usually a former employer...

 

[Dovo1695]

Why not get a can of Gillette gel goo and forget about all this lathering stuff, water hardening whatnot crazy stuff.

This is a website where there are 1500 threads debating the scent of Arko. Adding baking soda to a shaving mug barely reaches 3 on the 10 point crazy scale.

 

[Avi]

We have really hard well water ( enough to block pipes, create pin hole leaks from acidity and corrosion etc ). We ended up putting in a water softener and a carbon filter ( for farm run off) for this.

When we installed this one of the options was a separate drinking water tap line which had a slew of filters you could put in - one of which was mineral adder ( to be honest hard water really does taste good ). While we did not do this my joke with the installer was “so if I understand this we pay to get all the minerals out and then we pay again to get the minerals back in, that is so genius I would like to invest in your company”

If does work for you - you can house plumb harder water back in to where you’d like it and it ( or straight up well water ) really is really tasty, aka mineral water.

avi

 

[andromeda673]

can't you boil it?

or does that soften water?

 

[thombrogan]

@Dovo1695 - I think the new Barrister and Mann ‘Omnibus’ soap base was made with you in mind.

 

[srqshaver]

Get some well water from Western Pennsylvania

Can confirm. Western PA boy here. Water is extremely hard. I used to use so much shampoo at home and I remember when I moved away I thought they changed the formulation to make it foam more easily.

Freeze it.

Dang it! You beat me to it.

 

[Gabor]

The trouble is that brushes make bubbles, and air is a lousy lubricant regardless of how tiny the bubbles are.

sidenote:
the air in the bubbles are lousy lubricant indeed. but brushes make bubbles that is why we use them
But that is not a problem, as we don't use the trapped air to lubricate, we are using the surface of the bubbles- which is made of soap+water solution. We do like the bubbles tho.
We don't like the big bubbles because the specific surface area of a few big bubbles are less than lot more lot smaller bubbles for a similar volume. The surface area to trapped air ratio is better (SA:TA) if the bubbles are smaller, hence the big bubbles lather feels dry(er), way less soap and water had been incorporated in it. Also the bigger bubbles bigger surface causes faster water evaporation which leads to the collapse of the lather, the big bubbles pop fast, we lose the lubricating surface of them. Smaller bubbles stay in lather form way longer. (a bald men's head dries faster than one with a mane

What we do when we are using a brush, we are introducing more and more air to the soap solution, trying to reach the maximum SSA which consist of great many, small and uniform bubbles that gives us lots of wet soap on our faces.
Actually the reason behind using a brush is the same concept, the brush has a surprisingly great SSA so it can work in way more soap+air+water together.

 

[Darth Scandalous]

I tried out a half tablespoon of baking soda with a about a cup of water. No effect that I could tell. Bubbles and lather everywhere. I'm going to try to up the dose. I was using Mogno, and it occurred to me that this is probably a poor choice, because many mass market soaps (Arko, Tabac, etc) have added chemicals that help them lather in hard water.

Tomorrow I'll use Stirling with 50ml of water, and a teaspoon of baking soda, and a synthetic brush. If that doesn't work, I'll start adding in magnesium too (Epsom salt).

Do you find that a synthetic brush gives you fewer bubbles? I only have a handful of brushes, and only one synthetic, but it creates the most bubbles by far. The vintage horse creates the least, but it's not easy to use because it doesn't load product worth a darn. It's a Maggard synthetic, for what it's worth. I'm sure not all synths are created equal.

 

[thombrogan]

@Dovo1695,

If you’re ever back, Al wrote something that will let you enjoy your brushes and your airless-as-possible lathers without needing extra additives