The water in Chandler’s Ford is on the hard side. This is the reason.

Like everywhere else in Hampshire and much of the south-east of England, living in Chandler’s Ford means you’ll be faced with hard water. This isn’t because rain falls as hard water – rainwater is naturally soft. The issue is the soil in the ground.

Chandler’s Ford lies on soil that is predominantly comprised of chalk and limestone, which is rich in magnesium and calcium minerals. Once the rain seeps into the underlay, the calcium and magnesium components get to work and turn the water from soft to hard.

If you are a Chandler’s Ford homeowner and don’t particularly care for persistently hard water in the mains supply, your best option is to have a water softener installed. The benefits are immediate and plentiful! Skin and hair adore soft water; it stops them from becoming dry, instead leaving them looking and feeling silky and vibrant. Laundry also responds well to softened water, as clothes and towels won’t feel starchy to the touch and drained of colour.

One of the biggest problems with hard water is that it causes limescale build-up. Water softeners are highly efficient at getting rid of scale and will stop it accumulating in pipework and household appliances. Washing machines and dishwashers work way better with soft water and you’ll discover that cleaning kitchens and bathrooms is so much simpler – plus you won’t get through cleaning products nearly as quickly. Your money will also go much further with soft water flowing through the central heating system. That’s because it won’t get clogged up with scale, making it more expensive to generate the right amount of energy and, in time, seriously downgrading your boiler – which is an expensive piece of kit to replace!

The water hardness reading for Chandler’s Ford comes in at around 282 parts per million (ppm). Any reading above 200ppm is considered hard, so Chandler’s Ford ranks amongst the higher echelons of the water hardness league table.

Chandler’s Ford – an Overview

Annual rainfall: 17.66inch or 448.5mm.

The Hampshire town of Chandler’s Ford is now one of the main urban areas within the Borough of Eastleigh. In the 2011 census, it recorded a population of 21,436.

Lying on the old Winchester to Southampton road, the ‘Ford’ is believed to refer to the ford of Monks Brook, shown on a 1588 map “Charnells foord”.

In the mid-19th century, the local Bell’s brickfields was one of the biggest in England, producing 35 million bricks for the construction of the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

Although mainly a residential area, Chandler’s Ford has a significant industrial estate located off School Lane. The town is served by Chandler’s Ford railway station, which was re-opened in May 2003, connecting to Eastleigh and Southampton.