Dry Skin Starts When The Furnace Does: The Questions Behind It

The furnace comes on, the shower starts leaving skin tight, the kids are scratching at bedtime, and somebody in the house has decided the water must have changed. Here are the questions that come up when it does, roughly in the order they arrive.

Why does this always start the same week the heat does?

Because two things land at once. A furnace running in a high desert valley pulls the humidity out of the house, so skin is already drier before anybody turns on a tap. Then you step into a hot shower in water that has been hard all along, and the combination is what you feel.

The water didn't suddenly get worse in October. Your tolerance for it did.

What is hard water actually doing to my skin?

Hardness is dissolved calcium and magnesium. Those minerals bind with soap, and instead of a lather in your hands you get a film on your skin that rinsing doesn't fully take off. It's the same film that leaves a cloudy shower door and stiffens towels out of the dryer.

Homes in Boise, Meridian and Nampa typically run 8 to 15 grains per gallon. Water isn't considered soft until it gets under about 3. So for most of the valley there is a lot of mineral in every shower, every day, year round. The hard water page goes through the rest of what that does around the house.

Could it be the chlorine instead?

Could be. City supply in Boise, Meridian and Nampa carries chlorine or chloramine by design, because that's what keeps the water safe on the way to you. It also dries skin and scalp, flattens the taste of coffee, and slowly chews through rubber seals in fixtures and appliances.

Hot water and a closed bathroom make the chlorine a lot more noticeable than it is at a cold kitchen tap. If the smell hits you when the shower has been running for a minute, that's your answer.

So will a water softener fix it?

A softener fixes the hardness half. It runs ion exchange, trading the calcium and magnesium for sodium, and that's the whole of its job. Soap lathers again, the film stops, the glass door comes clean.

It does nothing to chlorine. Chlorine passes straight through a softener the same way it passes through an empty pipe. If chlorine is the part bothering you, carbon is the thing that removes it, and that's a different stage.

Do I need something at the shower or on the whole house?

Depends what you want out of it. A filter at one shower head treats that one shower head. Everything else in the house stays as it was, including the tap your face gets washed at and the water the laundry runs in.

A carbon bed on the main line takes chlorine and chloramine out of every tap in the house, shower included. If chlorine out of the shower is what you are after, that is the stage that does it, and it does it at every other tap as well. We size the bed from what your test results say, and the change interval comes off those results rather than a calendar, because carbon is the sneaky one: it doesn't clog, it doesn't slow the flow, it just quietly stops adsorbing and the taste and smell walk back in as if the housing were empty. The whole home filters page has the detail on where each stage sits.

My skin is fine but the water tastes flat. Same problem?

Related, different fix. The flat, treated taste in a glass of city water is chlorine again, and carbon at the kitchen tap handles it for a lot less equipment than treating the whole house. Reverse osmosis under the sink goes further and pulls out dissolved solids and nitrate besides, which is the one that matters on a well near farmed ground.

These are two different jobs, and one piece of equipment does not cover both. Hardness treated for the whole house, drinking water treated at the one tap you fill a glass from. The tap and drinking water filters page lays out what removes what.

How do I find out which of these it is?

Measure. We run hardness, chlorine or chloramine, iron and manganese, dissolved solids and pH at your kitchen sink, in front of you, and it takes about half an hour. No charge, no obligation. You watch the hardness titration change color and we write the numbers down and leave them with you.

Some of those visits end with us saying the water is fine and the dry air is doing it. That's a real answer and you get it for free. If you'd rather have somebody read the numbers out at your own counter before the cold really sets in, book a free water test and we'll come find out which half of this it is.