How our softeners work

How do we soften water?

Soft water is natural, clean water that is free from contaminants. This is because it falls in rock, rather than passing through limestone or chalk. Soft water doesn’t pick-up the impurities that can cause problems in 6 out of 10 households in England and Wales, as indicated by the map below.

Softening water

Tapworks softeners work in reverse to nature. Instead of soft rainwater collecting impurities as it filters through rock, we reverse the process by washing the water through a resin bed to take out the calcium and magnesium (hardness salts) deposits. As the diagram shows, hardwater enters a Tapworks softener and passes through a bed of tiny resin beads which are charged with sodium ions. The hardness salts are exchanged with the sodium, in a process called ion exchange.

Once the beads are covered with calcium and magnesium, a brine solution is used to wash them away and reintroduce sodium ions – this is called regeneration.

Once the beads are covered with calcium and magnesium, a brine solution is used to wash them away and reintroduce sodium ions. This is called recharge.

Now we know the chemistry. Let’s examine the mechanics of a Tapworks water softener where contaminated hard water is passed through a cylinder containing resin consisting of millions of tiny ion-exchange beads. As explained above, these beads attract and remove the hardness from the water by dislodging the calcium and magnesium. The result is pure, fresh, clean soft water pumped into homes. The resin bed now contains the impurities left behind by the hard water. But not for long. The recharge process has a small amount of brine (common salt or sodium chloride dissolved in water) rinsed through the resin bed. The sodium replaces the calcium and magnesium with the used contaminated brine flushed away into a drain.