A hard question

[Amazon warrior]

I don\'t know if anyone else has asked this, so I\'m asking now. Does the relative hardness or softness of water affect the quality of a paint job adversely or otherwise? I imagine it would, but I\'m looking for hard evidence here.

I\'m asking because the water in my area is extremely hard (you should see the inside of my kettle), and I want to know if I\'d be better off buying the big jugs of distilled water from the supermarket to paint with (I think it\'s for car radiators really, but 5 litres would last me a while).

 

[freakinacage]

i would imagine that harder is worse. you said yourself that it builds up loads of crap in your kettle. that would happen with your paints and brushes. get some bottled water and use it to water down if you are worried about it

use tap to rinse etc

 

[DaN]

I changed over to distilled a while ago - our area being especially hard due to all the limestone etc...

I\'m not sure if it\'s just psychosomatic (in my mind) but I think there IS a real difference. And it\'s not that expensive either :d

 

[Shawn R. L.]

Not positive but doesn\'t \'soft\' water have more salt in it?

 

[Sand Rat]

Calcium is the culprit here Shawn - hard water has a high concentration of dissolved minerals - most usually calcium or magnesium and can cause soap or toothpaste to not foam properly. So I can see having issues with hard water when using it to cut paint or to clean brushes.

 

[Shadzar]

couldn\'t you just strain your water through some coffee filters?

doesn\'t help with water with red clay in it as the water is still red, but helps remove a lot of the grit. moving away from well-water all my water now smells like a freshly cleaned pool. everything tastes like chlorine! :|~

regular/unflavor water should work just as good as distilled. the cheapest and nastiest tasting i found was Aquafina. works fine for painting with for me.

 

[Dragonsreach]

The best person to give you an answer on this question would be Einion.

Personally I\'m Ok with Tap water as it\'s showing no effects within our kettle.

Shadzar Coffee filters aren\'t designed to filter the size of the particles in hard water, you\'d need a proper Charcoal based filter system to have any \"direct\" cleaning effect. However Coffee filters are a good idea for any possible largescale or animate material.

Amazon Warrior, do you know anyone with a Condensing Tumble dryer as they have collectors for the water which is Distilled.

 

[freakinacage]

Originally posted by Dragonsreach

Shadzar Coffee filters aren\'t designed to filter the size of the particles in hard water, you\'d need a proper Charcoal based filter system to have any \"direct\" cleaning effect. However Coffee filters are a good idea for any possible largescale or animate material.

ah beat me to it!

i use tap water. it\'s not soft but it\'s not too hard - we still have limescale in the kettle

 

[Einion]

Short answer: yes and yes.

If you have hard water it does apparently cause some problems with thin acrylic layers (you don\'t tend to notice if if you don\'t thin heavily) especially with hobby paints like Vallejo. Distilled water is the best thing to use for thinning paints if you want to avoid problems, with or without a drop of something to break the surface tension, so if it\'s not too expensive go for it; as already suggested I\'d use the tap water for general rinsing, distilled for paint thinning (plus maybe the final rinse of the brush - can\'t hurt).

Originally posted by Shawn R. L.
Not positive but doesn\'t \'soft\' water have more salt in it?

Soft water should technically be closer to pure H2O, although obviously with tap water that\'s a relative thing since it has got loads of things in it like flourination, buffers and dissolved iron & minerals.

Originally posted by Shadzar
couldn\'t you just strain your water through some coffee filters?

No. These are salts in solution that are the problem and simple mechanical filters like paper don\'t remove them.

Einion

 

[Yetie]

Originally posted by Dragonsreachh a Condensing Tumble dryer as they have collectors for the water which is Distilled.

great stuff I got one onf those I\'ll have to start collecting some water out of it

 

[Shadzar]

Originally posted by Einion

Originally posted by Shadzar
couldn\'t you just strain your water through some coffee filters?

No. These are salts in solution that are the problem and simple mechanical filters like paper don\'t remove them.

Einion

so more de-salinized water than just distilled then. so Aquafina isnt helping that much as it probably still has a few ppm of salts in it?

 

[Dragonsreach]

Originally posted by Shadzar

Originally posted by Einion

Originally posted by Shadzar
couldn\'t you just strain your water through some coffee filters?

No. These are salts in solution that are the problem and simple mechanical filters like paper don\'t remove them.

Einion

so more de-salinized water than just distilled then. so Aquafina isnt helping that much as it probably still has a few ppm of salts in it?

I\'d hazard a guess to say that you\'re in the right direction with that.
We use a Brita filter within our kettle and it does improve the taste.

And when a friend of mine went to live in a cottage without direct plumbed water, I helped him design a water filtration system which used, Washed sand, gravel, charcoal and ripstop nylon as particulate filters.

 

[Amazon warrior]

Thanks for all the helpful answers. General opinion has persuaded me to get some distilled water and give it a try. It\'ll push me into using two water pots as well. At the moment, I only use one for everything, and change the water often, but two pots would be better.

Technically, I could use the water from my washer-dryer, except that I\'d have to unscrew it from the wall and I almost never tumble dry my washing!