Depending on where you live, you may or may not suffer from limescale, and its effects also vary greatly from region to region in the Netherlands. Water hardness is expressed in dH, German degrees of hardness. It's a measure of how much limescale is in the water: in the Netherlands we use the scale where 1 dH stands for 10 mg of calcium oxide per litre of water. The higher the number, the harder your water.
The hardness of our water comes from the Dutch soil, from the deposits of shellfish and rock dating from the time when most of the Netherlands was still under the sea.
Limescale starts to form at a hardness of just 3 dH. The annoying thing about limescale in water is that it builds up on heating elements in machines (damaging internal parts as a result), on shower doors and sanitary ware, and on your skin and hair.
Want to know how hard your water is? Enter your postcode on your water company's website and you'll see the hardness of your water.