[Shop-talk] Water softeners - wrong link the first time!

[Randall]

> some (most?) soften water without making any detectable
> changes to the water content, 

Hmm, that's an interesting question.  The site Brad linked to claims that
their unit removes the calcium carbonate (aka temporary hardness) from
solution and turns it into "micro crystals" that are left in the water as
suspended solids.  

It seems reasonable to me that, if that is true, the resulting water would
act "soft", eg lather easily and leave fewer deposits on fixtures and such.
You'd probably still get just as much scale when boiling it in a pan,
though.

But I wonder if you could tell the difference with a home hardness testing
kit (or with a laboratory test)?

Randall