Water with over 15 or 16 grains of hardness, can not be softened enough by adding extra detergent. However, adding a packaged water conditioner will soften the water, make it more efficient and boost the cleaning power of soap or detergent. Water hardness is reported as milligrams per liter, parts per million or grains per gallon. Hardness of groundwater tends to increase across the state from west to east. As water hardness increases, the cleaning ability of soaps and detergents decreases.
Water hardness can cause annoying laundry problems and less than ideal cleaning results.
Consequently, detergent is not always the culprit. Water represents 99.85 percent of the laundry solution, detergent 0.15 percent, so water becomes a very important ingredient. Generally these names do not appear on the labels. No visible particles are formed. These conditioners also trap the iron in the water if it is only a low concentration.