Tap water may contain an unpleasant taste, color or odor for various reasons. Rusty pipes cause the change in color, and bacteria growing in your pipes may cause the change in taste. Treating water helps rid it of the bad taste and odor by eliminating the bacteria.
Soft water, also known as treated water, is easier to use when doing laundry, because by treating water you eliminate the calcium and magnesium minerals that make it hard. These ions are what encourage depositing and redepositing of dirt as you clean fabric, making it dingy-gray and stiff. Softening water allows the water to lather without using too much soap. This helps you save on detergent and avoid the dingy gray that comes from hard, untreated water.
Hard water is known to leave debris known as scum. Its accumulation leaves scum on your sinks, bathtub and even in your water pipes. Adding a water softener helps solve this problem. It becomes cheaper to maintain your piping system and saves you the trouble of scrubbing off scum.
Many of the treatment methods are costly to install. Moreover, they require regular maintenance, the lack of which leads to accumulation of bacteria. The constant checkups are costly. Water distillers cost up to $1,700, while reverse osmosis units vary from $400 for a portable unit to $2,500 for a larger unit.
Treated water at times causes health risks because of the high concentration of chemicals used to treat the water. It may harm plants if used in watering them. Specific water treatment methods treat specific contaminants. For example, water softeners that treat through a process of cation exchange do not treat anions, such as nitrates, or biological contaminants, such as viruses. Further treatment such as boiling is required to make the output water safe for drinking.