Handy tips for removing hard water stains

If you're in a hard-water area, you'll know it: Surfaces that get wet frequently will have colourful stains, whitish spots or crusty deposits. The dreaded blighter lime scale may build up enough to interfere with the function of fixtures like shower head and taps. Soaps will seem to leave a residue, and it will take a lot of detergent to get things clean.

• The effects of hard water include dull, sticky hair; dingy, scratchy clothes; and spotted dishes.
• The culprits are the minerals in your water — calcium and magnesium.
• Moderately hard water has concentrations of at least 61 ml of these minerals per litre (about 4 tbsp per quart), and really hard water has double that amount.

Keep hard water away from the surfaces that it typically damages. Hard water does its mischief by evaporating and leaving behind mineral deposits. So to beat it, keep wet surfaces from air drying in the following ways:

• Dab faucets dry.
• Keep lawn sprinklers away from windows.
• Fix leaks and drips.
• Rinse sinks, bathtubs and shower stalls after use and then wipe or squeegee them dry.
• It also helps to have on hand a spray solution containing a non-precipitating water conditioner which is available from hardware shops.
• Mix 2 ml (1/2 tsp) of water conditioner in 1 litre (1 quart) of water in a spray bottle and spray it on wet surfaces to capture the mineral particles along with the water as you wipe things dry.

A number of cleaners attack hard-water deposits with special chemicals. These compounds include:

• Sequestrants, which capture (or sequester) minerals so they don't leave a deposit (the phosphates used in automatic dishwasher detergent are sequestrants);
• Surfactants (short for surface acting agents), which loosen soil by reducing surface tension, allowing the water to wet things faster (the main ingredient in laundry detergent is a surfactant);
• Acids, which help break down mineral deposits;
• Alkalis (present in some cleaners), which help suspend soil so it can be rinsed away.

Consider installing a water-softening filter system. These systems typically treat the water with sodium, which trades places with the calcium and magnesium particles in the water.

But to properly address all of the minerals in the water — including manganese (brown-black stains) and iron (reddish-brown stains) — your water-softening system has to be customized to fit the water in your area.

• Is your shower head clogged with lime scale? If possible, unscrew the shower head and soak it overnight in a bowl of white vinegar.
• In the morning, remove the deposits with a brush with moderately stiff bristles.
• If you can't unscrew the shower head, don't worry. Just pour the vinegar into a plastic bag and pull the bag up around the shower head.