Water Softeners and Air Filtration Systems - Yes the slimy water question again...

I've read numerous posts on the web regarding this question, but there HAS to be another answer!
I moved into a house with a water softener. The water is SLIMY. It's not 'silky'. I don't buy the whole thing about it being the 'natural feel of the oil on your skin' thing, because there are water-based secretions in places with few sebaceous glands that are exceedingly hard clean as well. :o Nuf said.
Since we've been here, I've developed dandruff and my skin itches, especially in creases, though it isn't dry or flaky. My husband and I also both developed a problem with insane amounts of perspiration after the move to 'soft water'. We have never had these issues before.
When we visit areas where the water is 'normal', it is MADDENING to come home and have to take a shower twice as long to try to get minuscule amounts of soap off and still not feel clean!
I have tried using less and less soap for house cleaning as well, and still my floors feel like there is soap residue. Nothing feels clean to me in this house! The only time my floors feel even remotely clean is if I uses ammonia, which cuts the soap residue left from this damn water.
We have tried every adjustment on the machine for the past year and still I am frustrated!
There has to be some middle ground between water so hard it stinks, ruins your appliances and turns your clothes orange and water that feels slimy and doesn't seem to clean at all.
Please, can someone give me some advice other than 'it's not slimy, it's silky'. There has to be some middle ground instead of the 'all or nothing' advice that abounds on the internet.

Sorry you're having such a hard time with your soft water.

Here's a little info on that "slimy feeling" http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jul2001/996090332.Ch.r.html

Softening water is not black magic but rather chemistry, physics, and a little mechanics on the side. Trying "every adjustment on the machine for the past year" rarely results in any improvement and more often compounds the original problems.

Some things to check...

Is your water from a municipal system or a well?
What brand of softener?
Is the softener properly sized and properly setup?
Is the softener operating correctly?

If your water "stinks" and is turning your clothes orange you have more problems with your water than you are aware of.

Have you had the water before and after the softener tested recently?
If not, then you need to get that done by a certified lab.

If you are on a municipal water system contact them for a water quality report.
Test for hardness, iron, , TDS, PH and manganese.
If well water add bacteria test.

With the answers to those question we might be able to help.

Thanks, justalurker. This helps a little. The link was informative, though truly I don't want to learn the chemistry. I just want to feel clean. Much like I don't want to know how my computer works, I just want to use it. :)
My husband has been doing the tweaking per the manual. It's a new house; less then two years. Brand new water conditioner that seems to be running correctly. Municipal system.
My water doesn't stink, but people in my area who do not have water softeners/conditioners have hard water and it has so much iron in it smells, tastes like nails and stains everything. I don't want hard yucky water. I also don't want what I have. There has to be a happy medium. That was my point.
We have never had issues with water. Where we came from it was just water. It tasted decent, it washed our bodies and home and it didn't cause any of the problems that people online talk about with pipes or appliances. I don't understand why we can't just use less salt, or have it run less often or something simple. I do not want to have to learn chemistry or plumbing or a different language (which is how I feel trying to read the manual). My husband has been trying to deal with it, unsuccessfully obviously.
Thanks for any help any one can offer. I apologize for my tone with the first post. I had just come out of the shower feeling yuckier than when I went in and after over a year of this, I had reached a point.

Lift the cover off your toilet tank and tell us what you see. Pink or clear water? Any orange residue on the sides or bottom? Run your finger along the sides and tell us what you find.

Now, is there any slime on the surface of the water? Do you see any "strings" floating or attached to anything?

I was thinking of bacterial iron.

Any way, spend a hundred dollars and get your water tested by a certified lab for inorganics. About 20 +/-.

I feel your frustration and situations like yours are not uncommon. People buy homes that come with softeners. Some softeners are poor quality. Some softeners are not the correct capacity and/or lack the necessary features to adequately treat the specific water problems they were purchased to rectify. Some softeners are not setup or installed correctly. Some softeners are not operating properly.

You are complaining about the poor quality of your water and blame it on "softening" without the knowledge or the facts to make that determination.

Learning chemistry is not required for you to have trouble free soft water but knowing what you know and knowing what you don't know is the first step to resolving your problem.

Actually the first step is go back to square one.

You didn't answer the four simple questions I asked. Those answers are necessary to begin to diagnose your problem(s).

Since you are on a municipal water system the water has to be biologically safe BUT, there can be lots of hardness, manganese, and iron. TDS can run high also.

You can diddle with the softener settings until the cows come home and you'll never even treat a symptom let alone cure the disease because you don't know what you are treating or if the softener is capable of treating what you don't know you're trying to treat.

Without knowing that the softener is adequately sized and featured and operating and setup properly for your water conditions you are wasting your time and ours.

Unless you are willing to be part of the solution and allow us to help you or you are willing to pay to bring in a local water treatment professional to diagnose the problems and recommend a solution all I can offer is that it sounds like your softener is not up to the task at hand, or has a problem that needs to be corrected.

Without more specific information about your water conditions and the specific softener and how it is setup there's little anyone can do to help you.

Good luck.

I've read numerous posts on the web regarding this question, but there HAS to be another answer!
I moved into a house with a water softener. The water is SLIMY. It's not 'silky'. I don't buy the whole thing about it being the 'natural feel of the oil on your skin' thing, because there are water-based secretions in places with few sebaceous glands that are exceedingly hard clean as well. :o Nuf said.
Since we've been here, I've developed dandruff and my skin itches, especially in creases, though it isn't dry or flaky. My husband and I also both developed a problem with insane amounts of perspiration after the move to 'soft water'. We have never had these issues before.
When we visit areas where the water is 'normal', it is MADDENING to come home and have to take a shower twice as long to try to get minuscule amounts of soap off and still not feel clean!
I have tried using less and less soap for house cleaning as well, and still my floors feel like there is soap residue. Nothing feels clean to me in this house! The only time my floors feel even remotely clean is if I uses ammonia, which cuts the soap residue left from this damn water.
We have tried every adjustment on the machine for the past year and still I am frustrated!
There has to be some middle ground between water so hard it stinks, ruins your appliances and turns your clothes orange and water that feels slimy and doesn't seem to clean at all.
Please, can someone give me some advice other than 'it's not slimy, it's silky'. There has to be some middle ground instead of the 'all or nothing' advice that abounds on the internet.

I am Khoi- a chemical technician. I have same problem as yours, and I am studying how to fix that, by searching in internet, I know this site and you.:)
I have read all comments / answers and I understand that no one is helpful (to be honest). Before continues my study, I wish to know that are there anything news from your side about this matter ?

Slimy, silky, slippery, soft, smooth, residue-free, absence of soap-scum and so on are all terms that customers, dealers, dissenters and proponents hear and use all the time.

Slimy, though, indicates that when two surfaces detract/separate that moist, gelatinous residue from one attaches to the other and separates. Imagine that of a snail's trail, bacterial iron in the toilet tan, or snot in a handkerchief, you touch it and it adheres to your skin and pulls away from its original surface. You can actually see and feel it on you finger. THAT is slimy!

Is that what is happening to you? Are you actually removing a jelly-like substance from one surface to another? Or is the absence of an abrasive substance (calcified deposits) causing two surfaces to collide with little resistance?

The vast majority of complaints come from people who have little or no experience with softened water and generally have a misconception on what properties it has. They associate the slippery feeling with soap residue because soap creates a similar feeling.

Hard water has the tendencies of leaving deposits on surfaces and soft water tends to remove substances from surfaces.

I demonstrate this by washing hands with softened water with Ivory soap, then rinsing and asking them to rub vigorously and try to create lather. They cannot. Then with two fingers, they briefly brush over a bar of soap and rub my hands again and lather appears easily.

The opposite is also demonstrated by washing with hard water and rinsing. No matter how much Ivory they apply to their skin, no lather appears. The soap is actually attaching itself to the skin and pores and is not easily rinsed off. The hand feels ‘clean’ because there is friction but in fact has soap scum on it. Glassware, dishes and windows should be ‘squeaky’ clean, not skin. Skin should be soft and pliable. But most importantly, it should be allowed to breathe.

When one hand is washed in softened water and the other in hard water, after they dry, there is a general consensus that the soft hand feels better. Which hand would you add a moisturizer to? Which hand feels stiff? Most say the hard-water hand.

Chemical companies spend vast amounts of your savings in adding surfactants to their products to chemically soften water so the little soap that is in the bottle/box can actually lather and cleanse. Soft water generally doesn't need detergent-like chemicals where simple soaps work extremely well.

The odd things is, I know people who LOVE hard water because they HATE that ‘slippery’ feeling, wash their hands and then drench their hands with moisturizers, ointments, creams and lotions to replicate the very ‘slimy’ feeling they moments before said they hated. Puzzling to me. Now, not only do they shroud their pores with soap scum but in turn add petroleum products compounding the residue on their skin rather than have fresh, clean skin that breathes.

It all boils down to understanding what is happening and getting used to it. Some people will never become accustomed to an improved situation and will actually campaign against others who prefer something different.

I remember when anti-lock braking first came out and there were those who absolutely hated the feeling of the brake pedal pulsating back at them as they try to break and turn on an icy surface. These were people who would rather futilely pump the brakes trying to replicate the very action they claimed they hated. I would never buy a car without it now. Seat belts, shatter-proof glass and turn signals all had their detractors when they first came out.

Softened water is not new but there are way too many people that see (feel) the benefits and are more bothered by going to hotel and cringing in the hard shower and hoping to get back home to clean themselves. If you love hard water and all the effects and results they clearly have, then great, continue using it.

Andy Christensen, CWS-II

@AndyC: Thanks for your sharing ! It 's helpful indeed.

@frustratedx9 :

My temporary solution as followings:

1/ Adjust the pH to lower value.
My untreated water have pH=4.7, so we have one exchange column to adjust the pH to 7. By removing the material in the exchange column, I adjusted it to 6.5;6; 5.5 and I stop at pH=5.5 when I feel that the slimy feeling is reduced significantly.
2/ Change my soap from alkali base soap to neutral base soap. Usually, a normal soap is a alkali base soap except some bath gel for childrend or moisturizer beauty soap (unfortunately, we don't have this kind of product for man in Vietnam). There are at least two brand that I can recommend :
2.1. Dove moisturizer beauty soap.
2.2. Jonhson & Jonhson childrend bath gel.

By doing that two changes, the 'slimy' feeling is improved significantly for me, my wife and my childrend, so I share this experience to you, may be it can help.

I hope that helped a little.

I am curious at how you are adjusting your pH from 4.7 to 7 by means of an 'exchange column'. What is the media or technology that raises pH this much and so well?

I am not sure either by what you mean 'removing the material'. I wonder how reducing the pH from 7 to 5.5 can make your water less 'slimy'.

Thanks,
Andy Christensen, CWS-II

"I am curious at how you are adjusting your pH from 4.7 to 7 by means of an 'exchange column'. What is the media or technology that raises pH this much and so well?"
I don't know what is that, the local dealer tell me that it 's " pH conditioner" or something like that, I dont really care about it.

The key thing is : "Adjust the pH to lower value", so you can use whatever way/technology to obtain that or if your untreated water have pH around that, just let it be, don't apply any technique to raises it.

"I am not sure either by what you mean 'removing the material'. I wonder how reducing the pH from 7 to 5.5 can make your water less 'slimy'."
I do it by "trial and error" test. I am not really understand why I feel slimy with the soft water (Much like I don't want to know how my computer works, I just want to use it-frustratedx9:) and me too )

It 's just because my feeling about the "slimy" of the soft water is similar with the "slimy" feeling of alkali solution, and I guess that they are the same characteristic, so I tried to do a opposite thing : reduce pH.

I start my experiment with Acetic acid (which is very popular in Vietnam,used for cooking) : add some drops of Acetic acid into a soft water vessel and use that to wash hands with soap and rinse, increase the Acetic acid until I feel satisfy.

I do the same with the soap: try to change the alkali soap by neutral soap.

Combine that two, now the slimy water in my house is "acceptable" but still not as good as a normal fountain water ( it 's not hard as "tastes like nails and stains everything" , it 's not soft as "I had just come out of the shower feeling yuckier ") and I am studying how to turn it become a normal fountain water.

If any one prefer to test anything, my advice is : OK you can try if you like, but to deal with the slimy matter, it doesn't help.
Myself have done it once, the test result is wonderful ( let 's say it 's same as fountain water) but I still feel slimy with that "wonderful" water.

@ AndyC: I guess that you never been take show with softened water (specially softened water from very hard untreated water) so that you couldn't have our experience. Let try once and you cannot say that it 's normal as fountain water

Id turn the softener off for say 4 weeks and see just what I have here. Our water here is very hard . But only put the softener on the hot and the recharge to very low. Works just fine.

I wonder how reducing the pH from 7 to 5.5 can make your water less 'slimy'."

@AndyC. I think that the link 's given by justalurker below can explain to your question
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives...0332.Ch.r.html
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Re: With soft water, why can't we rinse off all the soap
Date: Mon Jul 23 10:34:33 2001
Posted By: Lon Brouse, Faculty, Chemistry, Challenge Charter School
Area of science: Chemistry
ID: 993933059.Ch
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message:


Gene,

This is a chemistry question that requires a chemical answer. There are
many 'common sense' answers that don't do the problem justice. First,
soap is made by heating animal fat (triglyceride fats) with lye (sodium
hydroxide). The lye (NaOH) gives up its OH group and separates the
glycerine from its three fatty acid molecules. This produces one molecule
of glycerol and three ionically-bonded molecules of sodium stearate
(soap). This sodium salt will give up its sodium ion to a water
solution. The stearate will subsequently precipitate if it comes in
contact with an ion that wants to hold on to it more strongly. Calcium
and magnesium are the usual culprits when 'hard water' is used in the
shower. The resulting calcium and/or magnesium stearate make the ever-
popular 'bathtub ring'. Sodium stearate (soap) is comprised of a single
sodium ion attached to a single stearate ion. This combination is
soluble. Calcium and magnesium each have two places to form bonds and
each of these metallic ions can combine with two stearate ions. This
resulting molecule is insoluble in water and is rinsed away in the shower
spary. This same 'bathtub ring' is an ingredient in many candy-like
products. Look on the ingredients list of say, Tic Tacs and you will see
magnesium stearate! They synthesize the product and do not scrape it from
the inside of their bathtubs after the Saturday night cleanup.

Now enter the soft water. You have removed the calcium and magnesium ions
from the water and have replaced them with sodium. There is no tendency
to remove the sodium from the sodium stearate (soap) and therefore, no
tendency to form an inosluble compound. The surface of your skin has
enough electrical charges in the form of amino acids, to cause the
stearate ion to lightly cling to it. The soft water has a much reduced
ability to combine with the soap film on your body and therefore, it is
much more difficult to rinse off.

The answer? Use much less soap and accept the less than clean rinse
characteristics, or change to a synthetic detergent (a 'syndet') in the
form of a liquid body wash. Adjust the amount of this synthetic cleaner
and you should get much better results from your shower experience.

I hope this helps.

My name is Lon Brouse, a retired Chemical Engineer of 25 years, who specialized in industrical water chemistry in the Nuclear Power industry, and currently a H.S. Chemistry and Physics teacher. I wrote the "Soft Water" blog 7 years ago for Washington University's "Mad Science" online help website.

Kohi posted a question asking what technology can raise the pH of water so well. An anion resin cartridge that has been regenerated with sodium or potassium hydroxide will do the trick. The anions (Cl-, SO4--, HCO3-, etc.) will be removed and OH- ions will be substituted. The result is to raise the concentration of OH- ions, thus raising the pH of the water.

It sounds like most of the suggestions given on this blog are pretty much on-target. People who use softened water for the first time always have the same reaction. "The soap won't wash off," and other impressions.

Good luck with your quest for "the perfect shower!"