Do you drink softened water?

[Xanadu58]

If you've got a water softener installed, do you drink the water from it? We've had a water softener for a while and up until now , have used the separate tap that they installed that bypasses the softener. It's become so scaled up as our water is so hard so we've stopped using it. I've googled whether softened water is safe to drink but keep getting conflicting answers. So , if you've got a water softener, do you drink the water?

Hi Former water Chemist here. Hard water is generally better for you to drink than soft water. What makes water hard is the dissolved minerals Calcium, magnesium etc. Soft water is more acidic so for example if you have lead pipes the lead is more likely to dissolve into the water a bit. Having said that plenty of people have naturally soft water so it is not dangerous. What can be an issue is where water is softened by an installation where the deioniser needs to be charged with salt. In this case you can get spikes of salt in the water which could be dangerous for example if it was used to make up baby formula. Hope this helps.

No. Occasionally sip from upstairs taps, and the water is not as nice. Also never give that water to the plants, as I don't think it is good for them. I find the softened water is flat and, well sgot, which is weird.

Thanks both , I think I'll go back to drinking water from the non softened tap .

No. I have a tendency to high blood pressure so anything that increases my salt consumption would be bad. Also I prefer lovely crunchy hard water.