That cloudy glass and squeaky sink feeling
If your drinking glasses look hazy even after a “good” wash, or your faucet starts spraying sideways like a mini sprinkler, that’s not you losing your mind. In San Antonio, TX, a lot of kitchens deal with mineral-heavy water that leaves clues everywhere: spots on stainless steel, crust around the faucet base, and a soap bottle that suddenly needs twice as many pumps to feel “clean.”
The tricky part is that hard water usually doesn’t break things overnight. It’s more like sand in your shoes. You can still walk, but every day is a little more annoying until you finally deal with it. Soft water can feel like the fix, but it’s not automatically “better” for every home. The best choice depends on what you’re trying to solve: cleaning, protecting plumbing, helping appliances last longer, or improving how your water tastes.
Hard water and soft water in plain English
Hard water is water with higher levels of dissolved minerals, mainly calcium and magnesium. Those minerals are not “dirty,” but they can cause buildup as water dries. Soft water is water that has had most of those hardness minerals removed, usually through a water softener, which is a device that swaps calcium and magnesium for other ions (most commonly sodium) using a resin tank.
Hardness is often measured in grains per gallon (gpg). The higher the number, the more minerals you’re working with. Locally, the San Antonio Water System notes typical hardness in their supply ranges from about 15 to 20 gpg, which is firmly in “very hard” territory for most homeowners’ expectations (SAWS water quality FAQs).
So what’s “better”? Hard water is perfectly normal as drinking water in many areas, but it’s rough on fixtures and appliances. Soft water makes cleaning easier and helps reduce scale, but it adds equipment, maintenance, and some trade-offs in feel and setup.
What hard water does to a kitchen, day after day
Hard water shows up in places homeowners don’t always connect back to the water itself.
Mineral scale (that chalky white crust) loves tight spaces. Faucet aerators clog. Pull-down sprayers lose their nice even pattern. Dishwashers can leave spotting even when you use rinse aid. And the inside of your coffee maker can build up faster than you’d expect, which can affect temperature and brew time.
Hard water also messes with soap. Minerals react with soap and reduce lather, so you use more dish soap, more hand soap, and sometimes more detergent to get the same result. That “film” on the sink or on glassware can be a mix of minerals and soap residue that never fully rinses clean.
The bigger issue is what you don’t see. Scale can collect inside shutoff valves, supply lines, and the little channels in faucet cartridges. That can lead to stiff handles, dripping spouts, or weird hot/cold mixing that feels like the faucet has a mind of its own.
A practical checklist to choose the right fix
Before you spend money, decide what problem you’re actually trying to solve.
- Confirm hardness with a simple test strip or your utility’s reported range, and note if spotting or scale is your main complaint
- Decide whether you want whole-home protection (softener) or just better drinking/cooking water (filtration)
- Check under-sink space for any add-on system and make sure you can still access the shutoff valves easily
- Look for signs of existing buildup: slow faucet flow, crunchy aerators, or white crust at connections
- Consider your “hot side” appliances: dishwasher, water heater, and anything that heats water quickly
- If choosing a softener, confirm there’s a proper drain route for the regeneration discharge and a bypass option
- If taste or cooking is the priority, plan for a drinking-water filter at the kitchen sink even if you soften the house
- Budget for upkeep: salt refills, occasional cleaning, and replacing filter cartridges on schedule
Pressure vs flow, and why “low pressure” is often the faucet
Homeowners often say “my water pressure is getting worse,” but most of the time in a kitchen it’s flow, not pressure.
Pressure is how hard the water pushes (measured in psi). Flow is how much water comes out (measured in gallons per minute, or gpm). You can have decent pressure coming into the house and still get a weak stream at the sink because something is restricting flow: a clogged aerator, a gunked-up cartridge, or scale narrowing the openings inside the faucet.
There’s also the reality that many modern faucets are designed to use less water. Federal standards limit kitchen faucet flow to 2.2 gpm at 60 psi, and WaterSense-labeled bathroom faucets are even lower, so a new fixture can feel “different” even when it’s working correctly (EPA kitchen faucet guidance).
Hard water buildup makes this worse because scale collects right where water speeds up: inside aerators and spray heads. If your stream suddenly turns uneven or starts splashing, your first move should be to clean the aerator or spray face, not crank on your pressure regulator or start swapping parts blindly.
Soft water pros and cons that don’t show up on the box
Soft water makes a kitchen easier to live with. You’ll usually see less spotting, soap rinses faster, and scale slows down. For many homeowners, the biggest win is simply not fighting crusty faucets and cloudy glassware all the time.
But soft water has quirks. It can feel “slick” or slippery because soap doesn’t bind up the same way it does in hard water. Some people love that. Others hate it. It can also change how quickly you rinse dishes, so it may take a week or two to re-learn what “clean” feels like.
There’s also the practical side: softeners need salt, and they need a proper setup so they don’t accidentally send untreated water where you don’t want it (or treat water you didn’t plan to treat). And if you’re only trying to improve drinking water taste, softening the whole home may be overkill. A dedicated kitchen drinking-water filter can be a better fit for that specific goal.
Choosing safe, compatible parts for drinking water
Any time you add equipment that touches drinking water, you want to know the materials are meant for that job. In plumber terms, “it fits” isn’t the same as “it’s approved.”
Look for products that meet drinking-water contact standards, especially for things like valves, tubing, fittings, and treatment system components. A big benchmark in the U.S. is NSF/ANSI 61, which sets minimum health-effects requirements for materials that come into contact with drinking water (NSF overview of NSF/ANSI 61).
Also, don’t ignore what’s already under your sink. Older shutoff valves can seize up. Supply lines might be corroded or kinked. If you disturb them during a project, they can start leaking even if they were “fine yesterday.” And if you ever notice gurgling drains or sewer odor after making changes, don’t just dump chemical drain cleaner in and hope. That can damage pipes and masks the real problem.
If you hear banging when you shut the faucet off, that’s usually water hammer (a pressure shock wave in the line). The fix might be as simple as adding a small arrestor, but it’s worth addressing instead of living with it. Repeated hammer can stress fittings over time.
How to tell if your setup is working the way it should
You don’t need fancy tools to confirm you made the right choice, but you do need to pay attention for a few days.
Right after installation, do a slow, careful leak check. Wipe every joint dry with a paper towel and check again after running both hot and cold for a minute. Then check again later that day. A tiny drip can show up only after pressure sits on the connection for a while.
For soft water, the “tell” is usually cleaning performance, not taste. Give it a week. If you still get heavy spotting on glasses, double-check that the softener is actually treating the hot and cold lines feeding the kitchen. It’s common for a kitchen cold line to be left unsoftened on purpose, or accidentally.
For filters, pay attention to flow. If it feels weak right away, something’s off: wrong cartridge, partially closed valve, kinked tubing, or a clogged prefilter. If it starts strong and drops off fast, you may have a pressure issue or the filter is catching more sediment than expected.
When calling a plumber is the cheaper option
If you’re comfortable changing a faucet aerator or swapping a supply line, great. But water treatment and “under-sink reality” can get complicated fast, especially in older neighborhoods around San Antonio, TX where shutoff valves and connections may not be in great shape.
A pro visit usually saves money when you need a clean, reliable install the first time, or when you want to prevent the classic chain reaction: you touch one part, then three other parts start leaking.
PlumbSmart can help you choose and install the right setup without guesswork, whether that’s a whole-home softener through our water softener installation service or cleaner drinking water with kitchen-focused filtration. And if the “hard water problem” is really a worn faucet, a stuck valve, or a drain that’s half blocked with grease and mineral grit, we can handle that with kitchen plumbing repair so you’re not stuck swapping parts until something works.
If you’ve already had mystery moisture under the sink or you’re seeing water damage, it’s smart to stop and get it checked before it turns into cabinet rot. That’s exactly what leak detection and repair is for.
The simple answer: pick what fits your home, not just the label
Hard water and soft water aren’t enemies. They’re just different conditions, and your kitchen reacts to them in predictable ways.
If you want to make the right choice without regret, stick to three actions. First, match the solution to your goal: softening for scale and cleaning, filtration for taste and drinking-water preferences, or both if you want full coverage. Second, prioritize reliability: good valves, solid connections, and components meant for drinking water. Third, plan for the real-world conditions under your sink and inside your plumbing, because that’s where most “easy upgrades” get messy.
Do those three things, and you’ll spend less time scrubbing, less time dealing with drips, and more time just using your kitchen like normal.
