One of the first things you notice when having a bath in a hotel room abroad is how quickly the shampoo and soap lather up, and how soft your skin and hair feel afterwards. Working up a lather like that back home in Malta is difficult, and requires lots more water, soap and shampoo. Why the difference? It’s because the water in your hotel room is soft – either because it is naturally softer than Maltese water, or deliberately softened.

It’s the same with laundry. If you don’t add fabric conditioner to the rinse, the clothes come off the line stiff and hard, almost crunchy, as though they have been baked in the oven. The inside of kettles, boilers and water-heaters thickens with lime scale. Glasses come out of the dishwater with that “spotty” look, no matter how much liquid you put in the finishing rinse. These are all annoyances caused by hard water.

Hard water usually comes from aquifers and other underground sources, where it collects dissolved minerals from rocks – particularly calcium, magnesium carbonate and manganese. These minerals give water its undesirable hardness. Malta’s water is very hard because the islands are made of limestone. Water hardness is measured in grains per gallon. Moderate hardness is 5GPG.

In Britain, water softeners are installed where the hardness is 6GPG. In Malta, the hardness is an astonishing 10 to 26GPG, and in some areas of Gozo, it reaches 31GPG. And yet, water softeners are not used, while complaints increase about the problems caused by it. Water is never softened at source by the provider, because much of the water generated is not used for household reasons, but for purposes when it doesn’t matter if the water is hard.

Hard water is not so much a health issue, though the deposits on the skin and hair left by the interaction of hard water and soap can cause irritation in those who are sensitive to it. The real issue is one of needless expense, damage to electrical appliances, and general discomfort. When hard water is heated, the minerals in it dissolve and then re-crystallize, forming scale that eventually clogs plumbing and systems.

This is a problem with home water-heaters,

dishwashers, washing machines, kettles, coffee-makers and even hot-water pipes.

Calcium and magnesium in water react with soaps and detergents, diminishing their lathering and cleaning capabilities and forming scum that is difficult to rinse away. In the kitchen, this translates to spotted dishes and glasses, and scale on cookware. In the bathroom, it appears as a ring around the bathtub and basin, after they are emptied.

In the laundry, it means grey, stiff clothing. And in house-cleaning in general, it means more scrubbing and rinsing. When bathing, you need more soap and shampoo, and you may end up with rashes or skin irritation because hard water changes the skin’s pH and soap remains on the skin, clogging pores and causes itching.

The solution

There are various systems on the market, but Godfrey Formosa of D & G Projects, which represents the market-leader Kinetico, an American company set up in the 1970s, said, “The level of water hardness in Malta is exceptionally high, and it is causing problems in households. Many people do not even know there is a solution, or how easy that solution is. We just come along and fix the non electric water softener at the point at which water enters the house or flat, and that’s it. There’s no maintenance, just the requirement of topping up Natural Salt every few months.”

The Kinetico system does not use electricity, an important consideration given its rising costs. It works through water pressure and can be installed between the government meter and the roof-tank, softening the water that runs through the entire house in an unlimited quantity.