Hard or soft water???

[five0jo]

OK - the plumber is at the house getting ready to run water out to our detached garage. We have well water, so our house water goes through a water softner. The spicket in the attached garage just has hard water. What should we run to the detached garage - hard or soft water?? The water will be used to mainly rinse off the floor, but may also be used to wash cars.

Thanks for any input!

 

[polo2k]

Soft water will give less water marks when dry especially on paint. plus any heating elements that might be used (heater, kettle etc) will last longer

 

[tdkkart]

Go with the hard water, that way at least you'll have a way to get a drink in the garage. You also do not want to use soft water in radiators or for watering the lawn/plants.

 

[saabman]

Hard water should be fine. Soft water if you use Potasium vs. Sodium in the brine tank is ok for lawns (albeit an expensive way to fertilize)

 

[gatchel]

I also have hard well water where I live. I use hard water to wash the cars all of the time. I Just use a chamois to wipe the cars down- no water spots.

 

[tdkkart]

The previous owner of our house installed hot and cold water into the attached garage, the hot side being softened. There's approx. 35-40ft of pipe between the garage spigot and the water heater, amazing how fast the water cools off in that pipe, and takes forever to get the hot water out there when you first turn it on.
Works nice for washing cars though...........

 

[Falcon67]

Go with the hard water, that way at least you'll have a way to get a drink in the garage. You also do not want to use soft water in radiators or for watering the lawn/plants.

If you mean car radiators, best be putting distilled in that and for sure not hard water. Especially not hard mineral water if you have mixed metals in the cooling system.

 

[kartracer23]

I've got both for outside faucets - one straight cold for watering plants / lawn, one hot / cold mixing valve - with soft water for washing stuff.
It's soooo nice to have soft (and hot) water outside. Washing windows, I can just hose them off and not worry about spotting. And I use to use an auxiliary filter to wash my cars - don't need it any more.

Now, if you're going to use it to water plants all the time - that's a different story. But, if I ever needed to use the 'softened' faucet for watering, I just have to go to the basement and hit the bypass on the softener until I'm done.

 

[T1320T]

Since you're gonna be washing cars w it, I'd def go w soft water. Hard water spots are are a pain to get out. I have soft water in my garage & it works out much better than when I had hard.

 

[LocoCoco]

I've got hard water and washing the cars is miserable. Even drying with a cham there are still lots of water spots. Now I spend more time and money at the car washes in town. Really a shame since I enjoy having some beers, listening to music and washing the cars on a warm evening in the driveway.



LC.

 

[nate379]

Soft water for sure.

Don't know where you live but if it it somewhere that you have the water the lawn I'm going to assume you have a separate well for that.

tdkkart spend $20 and insulate the pipe. I just started on mine a few days ago and it's amazing the difference. What are you talking about with hard water and getting a drink?? You can drink soft water too. I have been drinking if for ~25 years... I'm not dead yet.

 

[five0jo]

Thank you for the points. We ended up going ahead and running softened water to the garage. I am not concerned about drinking it, as that is what the "beer fridge" will be for! I use distilled water for the car radiators. I have always used hard water to wash cars, so I guess I've just learned to deal with that. But, the plumber did mention that softened water will be better for the pipes, which was a good point I should have thought of! And, I figured if I planned to use a lot of water to really rinse off the floor or something, I can just walk the 100 ft. back to the house and engage the bypass on the softner.

 

[porschedude996TT]

I think that some people are not knowledgeable on what soft water contains. Soft Water in most cases is the result of Hard Water being filtered through a bed of beads that were first manufactured by Dow Corning. When the beads are clean they have an affinity to pull minerals from the water and hold onto them until the media bed is cleaned. The cleaning or recharge or regeneration is done using salt water or brine. The softener unit first bypasses and allows water to divert around the media bed and hard water is feed through the unit and into the house system. That is why the regeneration is done when you are sleeping. Once the brine water collects the minerals on the outside of the media beads, it is flushed out into the drain. Fresh water flushes over the beads until the brine is gone and nothing remains but clear saltless water which is now surrendering the minerals to the media beads. If the unit is set up properly they work very well. In my area with all the agriculture and water percolating into the ground and collecting minerals for decades is very hard. The water almost comes out of the tap in chunks… LOL

Distilled or deionized water would be best to wash your car, but not very cheap. Soft Water is the third best to wash your car or feed into you plumbing fixtures.