Science often deals with how things work. Because humans are naturally curious about the world around them, scientific stuff just fits with their nature. If you are currently installing a water softener system for your entire home, you may be curious as to how that works. Putting a lot of salt for water softeners into the one tank so that the other tank can soften the water is the limitations of how most homeowners understand this process. Yet, there is much more science to the process than just that.

Calcium and Magnesium: The Problem Elements

Outside of your pipes, calcium and magnesium are important elements. They are good for your body. Unfortunately, they are horrible for plumbing. They make the water "hard," as they begin to collect scaly plaques along the walls of the pipes. They also make it impossible to get anything really clean. 

Amazing Ions

An ion is usually a single atom, although it can be a group of atoms of the same element, too. The reason why this is important is that calcium and magnesium ions allow themselves to be replaced with sodium ions. So, when you use water softener salt, the sodium ions replace the calcium and magnesium ions in the water. When they switch out, the calcium and magnesium are replaced with the sodium, and the calcium and magnesium are no longer a problem or a threat to your plumbing. Cool, right?

The Role of the Two Tank System

The skinny tank contains plastic beads. This is something you will never see as this tank remains consistently closed. As water is drawn into the skinny tank, it is filtered through the plastic beads and a brine of salt. Here, the calcium and magnesium are filtered out and replaced with the sodium before traveling onward to the rest of the house. 

Now, here is where it gets weird and cool. The calcium and magnesium build up inside the skinny tank to the point where all you have left is a saturation of these two elements. So, your water softener expert sets the system to regenerate at a time where water usage is typically low, such as 2am or the like. (The regeneration cycle can be heard kicking in at that time if you are awake.) During this process, the tank system flushes out the saturation of magnesium and calcium, restoring your softener system to a "clean" state. That is it--that is the science behind water softener salt and how your system works.

Contact a company like Water-Pro for more information and assistance.