With hard water, more chemicals and detergents are needed for cleaning. That means increased costs for detergents and more wastewater with impurities going to the sewer. That is not good for your business and not good for the environment.
Extremely hard water may shorten the life of plumbing and lessen the effectiveness of certain cleaning agents. When hard water is heated, the carbonates precipitate out of solution, forming scale in pipes and tea kettles.
In addition to narrowing and potentially clogging the pipes, scale prevents efficient heat transfer, so a water heater with scale will have to use a lot of energy to give you hot water. Soap is less effective in hard water because its reacts to form the calcium or magnesium salt of the organic acid of the soap. These salts are insoluble and form grayish soap scum, but no cleansing lather. Detergents, on the other hand, lather in both hard and soft water. Calcium and magnesium salts of the detergent’s organic acids form, but these salts are soluble in water.
You Can Save Money and Energy! This chart is an estimation of savings for a family of four with ten grains per gallon of water hardness, and has installed a water softener:
Based on Data from: U.S. Dept. of commerce, U.S. Dept. of Labour, National Industrial Conference Board, Water Conditioning Research Assoc.,American Laundry Institute, U.S. Bureau of Standards, Univ. of New Mexico
via EcoWater Canada.