Name: Vickie

Country: usa

Message: Hi Paula,

I saw an ad on your site for a water softener called 'Hardness Master'. I went to the web site, I like what it says.  I was wondering, since you are so knowledgable about such things, if you could check out the web site & let me know if you think it would really work & provide to soft water I need for my tie dye.  Here is the site: www.equinox-products.com/HardnessMaster.htm.  Thank you so much. 

Vickie

Hi Vickie,

I'm afraid I find it difficult to believe the claims for this sort of "alternative" water softening system. The manufacturers claim that, by applying a magnetic field to your pipes, simply by wrapping the pipe in an electrical wire with a certain frequency and strength of current, they can change the hard water molecules to soft crystals (even when their system is used on iron pipes, which will block the fields). They say that this treatment does not remove the calcium and magnesium from the water, but somehow magically turns it soft anyway. I don't know what the manufacturers think is "soft" about the calcium and magnesium ions still present in water that has been treated by their system, but the fact that these ions are still in the water means that they will cause the same problems for dyeing as those in untreated hard water. Unfortunately, the field of water treatment is full of pseudoscience.

Dr. Stephen Lower, professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University, on his site about water-related pseudoscience, fantasy, and quackery, concludes about the HardnessMaster system, "There is no scientific basis for most of their claims."

The ad you saw must have been a Google ad. In general, I like their ads because they are in some way related to the content of the page, and they don't blink or have other maddening distracting animations. (I can't even read a page which has animations to distract the eye from the line of text.) However, I can't approve of this particular advertiser, because I do not believe in the efficacy of their product.

For water softening systems, I recommend either the sort that replaces calcium and magnesium ions with ions of salt, or the deionizer sort that removes the ions from the water altogether. The amount of salt that is added to the water by the first treatment is low enough to have little or no effect on dyes, and there is no question about the effectiveness of this type of system. Deionized or distilled water is also free of the water hardness ions, but these systems are more expensive. I recommend any main-stream water treatment company, such as Culligan and the like, not companies pushing "alternative" treatment systems that rely on mechanisms that are unlikely to be effective.

Because it is healthy for people to drink hard water, it is common (or used to be) to install such systems only on the hot water supply, and not the cold water supply; if this is true for the system you choose, use only the treated water for dyeing and for washing, even if you have to let the water cool before use.

It's not necessary to install a water softener in your home to get the benefits of softened water. You can use the water softening chemical, sodium hexametaphosphate, as an additive in your dye mixtures, soda ash mixtures, and washing water. You can buy this chemical from your dye supplier. It is safe, economical, and easy to use. Its only drawback is an environmental one: phosphates similar to those it contains, such as the phosphates in agricultural fertilizers and laundry detergents, provide excess nutrition to algae in water runoff, resulting in low-oxygen 'dead zones' in large bodies of water. For this reason, it is important to limit the amount of phosphates in our waterways and sewer systems; however, the small amounts required for hand dyeing by an individual are insignificant compared to other sources of phosphates in the waste stream.

For more information about softening water for use in dyeing, see the following pages on my site:

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