Spokane's water comes straight from the aquifer with minerals intact, and hardness varies a lot from well to well. Here is what that means for shower doors, faucets and dishes, and what helps.
Spokane's drinking water comes out of the ground with its minerals intact. If your shower door clouds up within weeks of being cleaned, the cause is in the utility's own test results. Here is what those results say, and what actually helps.
The City of Spokane draws its drinking water from the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, which covers 322 square miles in two states and supplies more than 500,000 people. Spokane pumps aquifer water from eight well stations and sends it to customers without treatment other than added chlorine.
The city's most recent well testing shows an average hardness of 159 milligrams per liter as calcium carbonate, about 9.3 grains per gallon, ranging from 90.6 to 360 across its eight wells. The U.S. Geological Survey classifies water with 121 to 180 milligrams per liter as hard and above 180 as very hard. So the average is hard, and some wells go far beyond that.
The system delivers up to 150 million gallons of water a day to more than 320,000 people through more than 1,000 miles of mains, so which well feeds your home at any moment is not something you can easily know. Check the city's reports for your area.
Aquifer minerals collect wherever a drop of water gets left behind. In a Spokane house, these are the usual places.
Reach for a mild acid. Ordinary soap will not touch calcium, but plain white vinegar on a cloth loosens it from glass and porcelain within minutes. Rinse with clean water when you finish. Keep vinegar off marble and natural stone, and do not combine it with bleach or any other product, since that can give off a dangerous gas.
Give it time. A plastic bag of vinegar held over a shower nozzle with a rubber band does the work for you, and so does a wet rag left around the foot of a tap. An old toothbrush finishes the job.
Skip the scouring powder. Steel wool and gritty powder leave fine scratches in glass and chrome, and new minerals cling to those scratches. Original fixtures in older homes deserve particular care.
Dry things off. Prevention here is ten seconds with a squeegee and a dry cloth. In a summer where July brings just 0.42 inches of precipitation, water leaves glass quickly and its minerals stay put in sharp little rings.
About half of Spokane's homes were built before 1960, and about 26 percent in 1939 or earlier. Decades of hard water can leave heavy deposits on old tubs, tile and faucets. Those surfaces respond better to patience than to force. Use mild acids sparingly, keep them off natural stone, and rinse well.
If a chrome or brass finish has worn through, no cleaner can bring it back. In that case, a replacement or refinishing specialist is the next step.
A softener for the whole house will cut scale a good deal, but it brings salt, upkeep and an up-front bill. Before you buy, read the city's latest well data and list which fixtures actually bother you. For some households, a rinse aid in the dishwasher and a daily squeegee turn out to be plenty.
When the buildup has gotten ahead of you, a One-Time Deep Clean treats the shower glass and details each faucet. After that, a Recurring House Clean stops the cycle by getting to the film while it is still soft. Glass that has been etched by years of deposits is permanently changed, and a clean will not undo that.
The questions Spokane homeowners ask most often about this topic, answered plainly.
TotalCare Cleaning will service Spokane and surrounding areas with background-checked cleaners and is insured up to $1 million. Re-clean guarantee: if we missed something, tell us by the end of the next day and we come back to fix it. Beyond Clean. TotalCare.
