You know that you have hard water because your soap has almost no lather, and you see hard water spots on your shower door. Your neighbor just told you that he has acidic water. But if hard water has minerals in it, shouldn’t it be alkaline?
Can Hard Water Be Acidic? Hard minerals in water can affect the acidity of water, but water can be hard as well as acidic. Calcium in water makes it hard and is very effective at neutralizing acid, magnesium also makes water hard but has little effect on acid.
What is in your water and where it is coming from can make a big difference in whether or not it will be acidic. Let’s talk about your water and where it is coming from.
What your water comes into contact with will determine if it is hard and if it is acidic.
Before water reaches a well, it can travel for many miles both under and over the earth. Rain falls and then travels down rivers and streams, going into lakes and ponds, and also traveling down into the earth.
Through its travels, acidic water that comes into contact with mineral deposits that contain minerals that neutralize acid will naturally be less acidic than water that does not make contact with acid-neutralizing minerals.
The water that does not come into contact with the acid-neutralizing minerals may come into contact with mineral deposits that add hardness to it. Leaving the water acidic and also hard.
Although the acidity and hardness of water may vary greatly from one area to another, the level of hardness in water may not have any bearing on the level of acidity of the water.
If you have acidic water, you may have to make it hard to neutralize the acid.
Because acidic water will corrode water fixtures, appliances, and even the plumbing in your home, most people with acidic water choose to treat the water with an acid-neutralizing system.
A very common way to neutralize the water in your home is to purchase a backwashing acid neutralizer that contains calcite to neutralize the acid.
Calcite is simply calcium, just like the primary ingredient in an acid-reducing tablet that you may take for everyday heartburn.
As your water runs through this acid neutralizer tank containing the calcite, the acid level will go down, but some calcite will get absorbed into the water, making it hard.
This is why an acid neutralizer is normally installed before a water softener.
The amount of hardness added to water from the calcite in an acid neutralizer is normally minimal.
A few grains per gallon is common, but the more acidic the water, the more calcite will be absorbed, and therefore, the more hardness will be added to the water.
If you have relatively soft water, to begin with, adding an acid neutralizer may make your water hard enough to be a problem, but by adding an inexpensive water softener after the acid neutralizer will remove the hardness.
Water will become acidic with reverse osmosis.
You may have hard water that is not acidic. And therefore, you have a water softener, and your water is great. But why is the water coming out of my reverse osmosis system acidic?
The process of reverse osmosis removes small particles and dissolved solids from water to make the water healthier to drink. In doing this, it is also removing the minerals in the water that neutralize the acidity of the water.
There is a solution to the acid water coming from your reverse osmosis system.
There are acid-removing reverse osmosis systems that you can purchase that will remove the unwanted minerals, and then add pH increasing minerals back into the water.
They work very much the same as other reverse osmosis systems but have an additional calcium cartridge to help neutralize the water, just before it comes out of your drinking water faucet.
If you already have a reverse osmosis system that you are happy with, you can try an alkalinity water pitcher to raise the pH of the water that you get from your reverse osmosis system.
To sum up:
Water can be either hard or soft and still be either acidic or alkaline, it all comes down to what the water absorbs before it gets to you. Acid water can be easily neutralized with calcite, but the calcite will add some hardness to your water.
