Does hard water affect your lather

[Lose the beard]

Hi, I have really hard water where I live. I can get a lather but its nothing like as big as what I see in the you tube vids.

I'm using plenty of soap, TOBS Sandalwood at present, and a good New Forest brush and a bowl.

Could it be the hard water giving me a problem, or do I just need to practice more.

Thanks.

 

[hunnymonster]

Hard water can definitely be an issue - particularly with true soaps (rather than synthetic detergents). Use more soap or try adding a small amount of salt or bicarb to your water for lathering - it might provide just enough excess sodium cations to prevent the magnesium/calcium ones from affecting your soap.

Talking here about 1/4-1/2 tsp per gallon of water.

Failing that - try some spring water(particularly Scottish spring water as it's naturally soft).

 

[Canuck]

Hard water will certainly affect hard soaps, you need to load for a good while (30 seconds as a minimum) to get over the water and you can only load so much soap with a hard cake... creams are not affected so much, you just use more cream. Use about a thumbnail size blob or a tad more, should be okay and you should have thick creamy lather.

 

[Fido]

Use enough product and water and you will produce more than enough lather. I have very hard water here and lather galore when I want it.

 

[antdad]

You might not be using as much soap as you think, hardness does affect latherability so overload the brush and practice.

 

[Lose the beard]

I used a lot more soap today and definitely got a better lather, so it looks as though perhaps I wasn't quite loading the brush up enough.

Cheers folks.

 

[chrisbell]

I always find that I have to load for longer than I think I need to, as I'm also in a hard water area.

 

[Pig Cat]

Having moved to locally from a house with a water softener to one without I noticed the difference straight away. Lather does not come very easily and there is a sort of scum left on my brushes that, in my mind, exacerbates the problem. Add the fact that my new bathroom is pretty crappy and I'm not really enjoying shaving like I used to.

But, there is hope. In a couple of weeks work begins turning our garage in to a kitchen. The builder will fit a water softener so it won't be long before things start getting back to normal. We're also having a shower room added downstairs so that could well become my shaven haven...er...should that be shaving haven? :s :icon_razz::icon_razz::icon_razz:

 

[mstrunck]

Check this tutorial: http://www.theshavingroom.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?tid=9003

I have hard water and find that if I have problems with a soap, loading until the bristles are pasty with soap, then add water slowly by the drops until the desired result.

It takes a while, but it will get you where you want to go. Later you can experiment with alternative ways to get you there faster.

/Max

 

[Bechet]

But fitting a water softener is the real answer! You'd get more lather more easily and have to use less - shampoo, washing-up liquid, laundry detergent, hand soap - and your beard would be softer, as would your hair, clothes, linen.

Softened water is no good for drinking or watering plants so you need a tap or two that are mains supplied.

 

[shanky887614]

i just soak soap and brush

then load for 1min over sink

then apply to face, add a load more water to brush then face lather

 

[Ken T M]

I live in central London, where the water is really quite hard. I find I have to charge my brush more diligently than elsewhere, and that, crucially, the range of water saturation a lather will tolerate before losing stability is a lot narrower than in soft water areas.

So... yes, it affects my lather in that I have to be more careful, but with the correct technique, I can build as good a lather here as anywhere, and if I really nail it I can get the lather to last for 3 passes without drying/collapsing.

P.S. I know my sig says Oxford... My home is Oxford, I live in London, and my heart is in North West Spain.

 

[asharperrazor]

@ OP,
Absolutely! Hard water is called hard water because it made lathering hard. At least that's what my research told me. Either case, the etymology makes sense, hard water makes generating any lather with soap hard. Soft would then just be the opposite of hard or rather normal water.

As has been stated already one remedy is to just load up more lather. This doesn't combat the underlying problem, but does provide a quick and easy solution. The other solution mentioned is a soft water system. It would certainly work, but unless you want soft water for everything, is kind of like using a sword instead of a scalpel. That said, having lived in a house with a soft water system, it was really nice.

A simpler solution is to use a water filter. I like RO, but the cheap pitcher filtration helps a lot.