Water Filtration Vs Water Softening – What’s The Difference?

high quality water filtration system

When you are choosing a water treatment system, you might be confused about using a high-quality water filtration system or a water softener. Ask yourself, what is the type of water you need for your household? Water filtration will remove all the contaminants from water while water softener will only lessen the number of minerals present in it. 

These two systems of water treatment are very different than one another. But both have equal importance in their respective fields. If you are about to make the decision, do not be confused and read the differences between both systems below:

What Is Water Filtration?

Water filtration is the process of removing impurities from the water by installing a high-quality water filtration system. The idea is to remove any impurities, chemicals, and other contaminants that have stayed in the water even after water softening or purification.

You can use a high quality water filtration system that uses activated carbon in order to remove carbon-based impurities and contaminants.

The process itself is a lot different than water softening and uses more technology. It is done through oxidation and catalytic conversion, then it uses micro-filtration and ion exchange. In the end, it uses absorption to absorb the impurities and contaminants.

Water filtration does not require regular maintenance and we can say it has low maintenance. But as compared to water softeners, it is expensive to install.

You can choose water filtration system if you feel the need to change the taste of the water. additionally, if your household water is contaminated or you feel the risk of bacteria, you can choose water filtration.

What Is Water Softening?

Water softening is the process of turning hard water into soft water. this is done in order to reduce the amounts of minerals resent in your water so that it will not have harmful effects on your health. Hard water has high mineral contents which will ultimately lead to a residue in the pipelines, in your appliances which use water and leave spots on your clothes. Hence, almost every household has a system of softening the hard water so that it does not affect anything that it touches.

In the process, a water softener treatment system treats the water before it enters your household or before it enters your appliances which use water like dishwashers and washing machines. This is a fairly simpler process as compared to water filtration, as it employs salt and ion exchange to remove iron, calcium, and magnesium from water.

While water softening is an inexpensive treatment of water, it requires regular maintenance because it uses salt exchange technique. You have to regularly restock the consumer salt.

You can go for water softening if you feel the need to soften the hard water. you have to examine your household water and see for bacteria or other contaminants. If there is the presence of contaminants and pathogens, water softening will not help deliver good results. If you do not have the problem of contaminants, you can choose water softening instead of water filtration.