78 
House & Garden 
SOLVING THE HARD WATER PROBLEM 
As Hard Water Has Many Distinct Disadvantages Any 
Equipment That Makes It Soft Is A Paying Investment 
D ue to its globe trotting in the under¬ 
world, water takes up more or less 
mineral matter. It may look clear and 
taste well enough and yet contain lime, 
or magnesia or some such mineral. In other 
words, you will be drinking and washing 
and cooking with a mineral water, which 
has various and sundry bad effects. 
In some vicinities water is harder than 
in other vicinities. For example, in regions 
where there is mud, stubble, lime and 
magnesia and less of the harder minerals, 
the water will be harder than where the 
rocks through which it flows are of more 
“Spartan stuff.” Wherever there is mineral 
matter which succumbs to the soluble 
powers of water, we have water of some de¬ 
gree of hardness. 
Under some conditions it doesn’t matter 
if there is a slight degree of hardness 
(which usually exists), but under other 
conditions it is quite perilous to have wa¬ 
ter with any degree of hardness. 
Until recently, it was very difficult to 
break up the union which takes place be¬ 
tween the solvent water and ready-to-be- 
attached mineral matter, but now we have, 
due to scientific endeavor, a method by 
which any water can be made soft for 
personal, culinary, and industrial uses. 
In many sections of the country, people 
ETHEL R. PEYSER 
have taken to using rain water because 
it is soft. They feel that soft water is bet¬ 
ter for the skin, for the shampoo, for the 
laundry; which, of course, it is. They have 
discovered that their toilet soaps, unless of 
the most expensive types; and laundry 
soaps, unless particularly made for hard 
water, will not form a lather: that is, will 
not combine easily with hard water. For 
this reason those who can afford it have 
elaborate systems of pipes, vats, etc. for 
catching the rain water and those who can¬ 
not afford such plants, have resorted to the 
cistern, wherein the rain water becomes 
stagnant and perilous. Whichever way the 
thing is done, expensively or otherwise, the 
water is not always fit to drink, for rain 
carries impurities from the atmosphere, its 
storage is uncertain, and there is no surety 
that the water is safe. 
Furthermore, in the districts which have 
hard water, pipes clog with the mineral 
matter, boilers have to be chiseled out, tea 
kettles have to be scrapped or scraped, all 
because of the mineral scale which adheres 
to these things in affectionate embrace. 
Years ago the industries found all this 
out and used the zeolite water softeners. 
But only recently has the domestic softener 
come into being. A Berlin professor, named 
Ganz, discovered the fact that a certain 
sand-like material called zeolite had the 
charming generosity of giving up a part of 
its body or base (the sodium part) in ex¬ 
change for the lime or the magnesium of 
the water that passed over it, rendering wa¬ 
ter to the zero point, that is, completely 
without lime or magnesium. He also found 
out that if zeolite were artificially made he 
could produce a synthetic composition 
which would have other bases generous re¬ 
spectively to nickel or to gold or to what¬ 
ever mineral really was in the special sup¬ 
ply of water, and would exchange with the 
water, for the mineral it did not need, the 
mineral of its own body which was so 
lightly married to it that it would combine 
rapidly with the burdened water. So from 
this unstable composition of chemical life 
was born the modern domestic and indus¬ 
trial water softener. 
As the domestic softener is simple, I will 
describe it and then pass on to its “power 
for good.” It chiefly consists of a cylinder 
with the natural or artificial zeolite in it; 
two pipes, one of which lets the water in 
and one which lets the water out; a valve 
which permits salt to be dropped in. In 
order to re-use the zeolite (after it has ex¬ 
changed so glibly its mate for the mineral 
mate in the water) it has to be restored with 
(Continued on page 116) 
The mechanics of the water softener are very simple. The machinery consists of a tank in which 
is stored a chemical compound capable of exchanging some of its elements for the mineral elements 
in the water. To this is added salt. The water enters this tank hard and passes out soft. 
