When purchasing a water ionizer, you should be concerned about the hardness of your source water. When it comes to water ionizers and hard water, the hardness of your water can severely impact the performance of your water ionizer and even clog up your water lines inside your water ionizer. You need to take the appropriate steps to protect your water ionizer.
The hardness of water is a measurement of the concentration of the minerals in that water. When magnesium and calcium combine together, it is called scale, and it appears as a white powder when water dries. It leaves water spots all over your sink, faucet and glasses. It’s unsightly but most importantly it’s problematic to a water ionizer.
Hardness is measured in grains. A grain of hardness is equivalent to 17.1 parts per million. So, you need to look up your municipal water treatment facilities annual water report on Google and look for the value that is either parts per million of minerals or grains of hardness. When it comes to water ionizers and hard water, 9 grains of hardness is the limit for the hardness of your water going into your water ionizer. If the value is listed as parts per million, simply divide the parts per million by 17.1 to get the grains of hardness.
If you determine that your source water is harder than 9 grains, you will need to install a scale inhibitor as a pre filter to your water ionizer. The best scale inhibitor is made by Omnipure and it only cost $17.99. It has built in quarter inch Quick Connect adapters, so all you need to do is cut the water supply line to your water ionizer and plug in each end of that cut line into the Omnipure scale inhibitor.
