Thread: Quality of Water

I live in a place where the water from the tap is pure. No chemicals added.

Some time ago I visited London and stayed in a nice hotel. To my surprise, not to say disappointment, the water from the tap was chlorinated. As a result of this my shave was not so comfortable. The rest of the day my skin felt sticky. Perhaps it takes time to get used to chlorinated water and sooner or later one doesn’t know any better.

How lucky are you guys? What is the quality of your water supply? Or is it your opinion that it doesn’t matter?

I think the type of water does matter quite a bit, its part of the formula, when you make your lather. We have very nice soft water here but sometimes I can smell and taste a little clorine in it so when we make our soap we use Purified of Distilled water.

Water varies greatly throughout the world. Here in the US there is a difference between towns as it is "treated" differently. Then you have all the different natural minerals. What I have learned throughout the years, different soaps perform differently with different waters. Your soap may have performed poorly when you were "out of town", but a poor performing soap at home may have performed well at the hotel. Sounds crazy...but it is very true.

Chlorine won't affect soap performance. It may give the water a slight chlorine smell and make it taste bad. It's more likely the minerals in the water that will affect soap performance. It may be a hard water issue or other chemical compounds.

I would go along with what TBS said. I have had the good fortune to travel a fair bit and never had any trouble with getting a decent lather anywhere because the water was chlorinated. Hard water is a different story and why I take Arko when traveling, works with just about any water I have had to use.

Bob