This article comes from our own personal experience and involves shower water that caused dry, flaky and sometimes itchy skin.
Each time we visited a family member’s home our children’s skin got really dry… and so did ours. We knew immediately that the water which the family member said had no issues that would cause the conditions we experienced — did actually have an issue.
We suspected chlorine as the skin irritant (due to our having to remove it from the shower water at our own home) and performed water testing using the COMPLETE Water Quality Test Kit to try and confirm our suspicions.
To our surprise, we did not find anything terribly out of line regarding the water’s chlorine content but we DID find that the water had unusually high pH and total alkalinity levels.
Had we not tested, we would have installed a filter geared more towards chlorine removal and possibly wasted our money!
So what did we end up doing?
At home we previously installed shower filters using the Austin Springs Premium Shower Filter (after doing water testing, of course!) to correct higher than desirable chlorine levels in our shower water. We noticed a positive change in the water almost immediately. The chlorine smell went away, soaps lathered up better, and the water seemed to take on a sweeter taste.
In that case we knew we would need a shower filter designed more for chlorine removal (hence the reason we opted to install shower heads that utilized Austin Springs Premium Shower Filters) but at our relative’s house we believed the issue dealt more with the pH and alkalinity of the water — despite neither parameter’s test value having strayed too far away from the norm.
The next time we visited our family we installed the Basic Austin Springs Shower Filter and immediately noticed a change in shower water quality. The water felt less ‘abrasive’ and we none of us needed to slather up with several layers of moisturizing lotion after a shower.
Moral of the story?
Testing your water (or a family member’s water) before selecting a water treatment option empowers you with the ability to correctly pick the water quality improvement device best suited for your unique water quality situation.
NOT testing the water before picking a water filtration device may result in a person installing a water filter that will not directly address the water quality issue at-hand… and that means money wasted on a solution that solves nothing.
Simply taking a few minutes and performing simple at-home water testing may save you hundreds of dollars and hours of aggravation!
