I have seen plastic bottles of water in MANY sizes from 100ml to 4,000 ml.

Clean fresh water

Adding salt to your bath water will NOT make it soft. While traditional water softeners do use salt to operate, they are NOT making the water softer by adding salt to the water. Instead they are adding just the sodium ions from the salt and removing Calcium and magnesium ions from the hard water to make soft water. You cannot make your bath soft by just adding sodium either - the only way to make it soft is to (somehow) remove the calcium and magnesium from the water and the most economical way to do that is with a traditional water softener. Note that there are newer devices and resins that work differently from a traditional water softener. These are sometimes called "salt free softeners" - but this name is technically not accurate. While they do not use salt - they also do not remove hardness from the water so they are not actually softening the water. Some manufactures claim that while the Calcium and Magnesium are still in the water their devices cause the water to act as if it were actually soft - and some of their customers agree it works (and some do not). These newer devices and technologies continue to improve and be researched. In 2009, there is a large study being conducted by the water quality association (wqa.org) and Battelle labs to investigate some of these types of systems and to hopefully offer more insight into the scientifically provable aspects of these so-called salt free softeners.

Typically in the east coast the rock formations are igneous rocks like granite so the water doesn't pick up very much calcium so you will have a modest amount of hardness on the east coast of the united states, in the south central, primarily the Texas area, you get extremely hard water along with high tedious and on the west coast water has an average hardness and then are some areas of the mid-west where the water can be extremely hard, also from wells they being the upper mid-west, the water has a lot of limestone deposits and that's where water hardness is imported to the water.

I'm wondering this same thing. Supposedly soft water is good for your skin but everytime I'm at someone's house who has a water softener I find that my hands feel slick after washing them and then within a few hours of having washed my hands they begin to itch and peel. Both my parents and my friends have a water softener and I've had this experience at both places. I've also showered at my parents house using my bath soap (ivory) and found their water to irritate the heck out of my skin (dryness and itching).

This happens almost every time I was my hands with soft water and never otherwise. I wonder if it's the salt content of the water.

Funny thing is, I grew up with soft water (again, parents have it) but now after using 'regular' water for years and years the soft water seems to just irritate the heck out of my skin. I'd actually like to have a water softener but am not about to pay that kind of money for something that sure seems to irritate my skin.

It's excellent, charcoal should be further treated and turned into activated carbon to give it more surface area but in the absence of that process and all you have is charcoal; it does a pretty good job

nos2 is water

It isn't an element, it is the salt sodium chloride a compound.

The calcium (as calcium carbonate) in hard water replaces the sodium on the fatty acids of the soap causing them to precipitate as a sticky scum. This deposits soap scum on the things being washed and causes the formation of "bathtub ring" on bathtubs, sinks, etc.

Hard water interacts with soaps preventing them from cleaning properly and forming soap scum and bathtub ring (detergents are not affected this way).

Hard water coats the insides of pipes preventing them from rusting, but can also clog the pipes with mineral deposits.

Very hard water sometimes has an unpleasant "alkali" type taste.