Hard water affects around 60 per cent of homes in England and Wales.

It can damage household appliances, add to heating bills and increase the cost of soap and washing powders, as well as leaving unsightly scale and scum throughout the house.

We can deal with hard water and the effect it has on our day-to-day lives in a number of different ways. But before we can decide which one of these is best for any given situation, we need to understand what hard water is, why it occurs and what can be done to neutralise it.

Water – the basis of life
More than two thirds of our planet is submerged by water, and water makes up more than 75 per cent of the human body. Without it, life as we know it on earth would be impossible.

In the UK, each one of us uses, on average, around 59 litres of water a day for:

This amounts to a daily total in the UK alone of more than 3.5 billion litres – and this is only a fraction of our overall consumption. Power plants, manufacturing, food production and agriculture increase this figure by many thousands of times.