What's the story with the hardness of our water, and why are some people utterly convinced of the benefits of a water softener, while others think it's all nonsense?
Many places in the Netherlands have hard water, because our drinking water is drawn from the ground. The Dutch soil consists of various layers of chalk and rock — a result of the time when the Netherlands was still under the sea and the deposits of shellfish put lime into the soil.
The water drawn from the ground in the Netherlands comes from more than two hundred different sources. That explains why water hardness varies by region. On average, the hardness of Dutch water is between 7 and 10 German degrees (dH).
If the water from your tap is 8 dH or higher, the water company has already softened it centrally — with pellet reactors that reduce hardness using small beads that absorb limescale after a reaction with an added catalyst. The drawback of this technique: the water hardness is only reduced by about fifty per cent. So the original hardness of your water may have been around 16 dH.
A water softener at home takes care of the last stretch: water your water company has already softened centrally, we soften further to the level you find pleasant — for example 2.7 dH or 0 dH. What's best is a matter of personal preference, and there are plenty of misconceptions about that too.