Friday, May 6, 2011

Water Hardness

I've seen a bit more mineral deposit build-up at our house in Natick than I did at our condo in Belmont, so I've been wondering what the hardness level of Natick water is. I think I just got the answer. I just received our town's annual water report and one of the items they sample is CaCO3 which is considered a measure of hardness. Wikipedia says that Hardness is usually measured as a combination of Calcium and Magnesium, but I'm guessing the number my town reports is a pretty good judge. They report 94.3 ppm CaCO3. According to Wikipedia, it sounds like this is the same as milligrams per Liter. Wikipedia provides a scale of hardness levels:

Soft0–60 mg/L
Moderately Hard61–120 mg/L
Hard121–180 mg/L
Very Hard181+ mg/L
So, we have moderately hard water here in Natick. No wonder I see more mineral buildup---I believe we had soft water in Belmont. I'm guessing this is due to the fact that Natick water comes from local wells whereas Belmont water comes via the MWRA which gets its supplies from the Quabbin and other western Mass. reservoirs