water softener or soda crystals?

rigsby1967

I've read alot about soda crystals to put in the washing machine and so using less washing powder, but would water softener salt be ok to use as i have noticed its a lot less expensive.

Thanks

Oliver14

I don't know for definite but I would be wary of putting salt into your washing. Salt can be quite a reactive chemical so I would be wary of this.

I use soda Crystals which are pretty inexpensive any way. A 1kg of soda crystals for £1.20 lasts me for around 20 washes that's around 5 pence per wash (sounds pretty cheap to me). so even if you did 4 washes a week that's only 20 pence. You can also find with experimenting its possible to reduce your washing powder far more than you think.

BitterAndTwisted

I agree with Oliver: I wouldn't want to put salt in with the washing as I don't understand the chemistry involved.

One thing you can do it to consider halving the manufacturers recommended amount of laundry detergent, or even quarter it, and then add one tablespoon of soda crystals. Experiment and find out what works for you and your different kinds of soiling. Most clothes these days are only worn for a few hours at a time, so mostly just need freshening up. You could even turn the temperture down by ten degrees at a time and see what the affect is. That would probably save you more money than using the soda crystals.

rigsby1967

Thanks bitterandtwisted and Oliver 14

I think i will leave it and just use the soda crystals .

rigs

ragz_2

Dishwasher salt is Sodium Chloride and washing soda is Sodium Carbonate, so you're right in that they are similar and they work in the same way (on the magnesium and calcium ions) but they are not the same.

Wikipedia is great!

mi_jardin

I ad a tbsp of soda crystals to drawer and reduce the amount of washing powder by half. Fingers crossed it seems to work, I live in a hard water area and my last machine lasted a long time.

zippychick

ive found a thread on mixing soda crystals with washing powder which may help

Zip

Ben84

It won't work. Water softener salt is basically low quality table salt, it's used by ion exchange resins in the water softener to swap the minerals that make water hard with salt (minerals are washed down the sewer periodically to regenerate the resin). Nothing like this happens in the washing machine, instead the water softeners you put in there bind to the hard water minerals to stop them coming out of solution to form limescale. So, one physically removes minerals by swapping them with the salt, the other just binds them up during the wash cycle. Very different chemistry and they can't be used in place of each other.