Fact: Water Quality Affects Laundry
Poor quality water is not only harmful to your health; it can also damage clothing, sheets, towels and anything you may wash in your laundry. Low quality water can damage the fibers of your clothing and linens, as well as cause stains or fading. Not only so, poor water quality can also reduce the effectiveness of your washing machine and even shorten its lifespan costing you more money in water and energy bills in addition to repairs. Damage to your clothes and washing machine result from the high mineral and chlorine content in tap water, both of which can be addressed with a home water treatment system.
How Poor Quality Water Affects Laundry
If you could take water just as it is from deep in an aquifer or straight from rainfall and run it through your washing machine, your clothing would get clean with minimal damage. The fabric would be cleaner and feel soft to the touch without putting excessive strain on your washing machine in the process. Unfortunately, the water source for the water coming through your pipes may not be as pure as think and can take quite the journey before ending up in your washing machine. Water sources can become contaminated and as water is redirected into your city it can accumulate a high concentration of minerals, bacteria and harmful contaminants before chlorine and disinfectants are added at the water treatment facility. While minerals like magnesium, iron, and calcium are beneficial to your health in the right ratios, elevated levels of these minerals combined with high quantity of chlorine can cause damage to both your health and your laundry.
Chlorine
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), chlorine needs to be added to prevent harmful bacteria from growing in the water and causing people to get sick. Chlorine kills germs because it is highly corrosive. For personal health, excess amounts of chlorine should be avoided because the damage it’s corrosiveness can cause to soft tissues and organs and your skin.
High levels of chlorine in your home’s water supply can thin the fibers of your fabric, weakening the quality. It can also cause the colors to fade or even bleach. Chlorine can also deteriorate the rubber seals in your washing machine causing you to spend money in appliance repairs.
A water treatment system from Home Water Solutions will remove the excess chlorine that has been added to your city’s water supply to disinfect, resulting in a purer water quality that will extend maintain and even enhance the fabric fibers and colors of your clothing rather than damaging them.
Hard Water
Water with high levels of mineral deposits, particularly calcium and magnesium, has an equally damaging effect on the clothes you wash. Hard water can interfere with the effectiveness of most soaps and laundry detergents, as they prevent water from properly mixing with the detergent therefore preventing proper cleaning. The negative effects of hard water are even more obvious when soap is used rather than traditional laundry detergent. Soap reacts with elevated calcium levels in the water and forms sticky white chalky substance, often referred to as detergent curd that will stick to fabric. Although this does not typically stain clothing, it will require more water and more washing to remove the residue and get the clothes clean.
The minerals in hard water can also bind to fabrics causing colors to dull and fade. As colors are affected, the quality of the fabric is also affected causing clothing or linens to feel rough, itchy, hard/stiff, and uncomfortable.
Iron
High iron levels in water can also be problematic for the condition of your clothing. Usually yellow or orange in color, stains from iron are difficult, if not impossible to remove. Bleach is ineffective at removing iron stains and often makes the stains worse. Similarly, too much manganese in the water can cause a brown stain to occur, although these stains tend to be much easier to remove and are much less common.
Northern Colorado Home Water Treatment For Cleaner Clothes
Washing clothing and linens with poor quality water can not only damage your clothing, it will also lead you to use higher amounts of detergent and water in an effort to get them clean leading you to spend more in products, water and energy. Adding a water treatment system to your home will eliminate elevated levels of chlorine, minerals, iron and other contaminants that negatively affect you’re your health and your belongings. By utilizing the purest quality of water for washing, your clothes will last longer and maintain their color, and in addition you will find that you will need less detergent, while being able to conserve water usage, and prevent the deterioration of your appliances.
Contact Home Water Solutions at (970) 840-0868 today for more information about the benefits of an in-home water treatment system for your clothing, linens and particularly your health.
