If you live in Hedge End, it’s hard water that you’ll experience.

A feature of Hedge End, like much of Hampshire and the south-east of England, is hard water. It’s not because the water companies treat it to make it hard, it’s due to nature – the soil beneath our feet to be accurate.

Hedge End has a predominantly chalky sub-base of soil content, which is full of magnesium and calcium minerals. Whilst rainfall is naturally soft, once it comes into contact with the chalky underlay, these minerals have the effect of turning the water hard from soft.

So, if you live in Hedge End and you don’t much care for hard water, the best course of action is to have a water softener installed. This will produce immediate benefits. Our skin and hair respond favourably to soft water, because it doesn’t make them dry out. As a result, they look and feel so much shinier and softer after washing. Also, opting for softened water means laundry feels more vibrant and fluffier to the touch.

Another plus point for water softeners is that they are highly effective at keeping your home clear of horrible limescale build up. With hard water on tap all the time, scale really gets into pipework and household appliances. Washing machines and dishwashers also appreciate soft water. You’ll also find that it’s much easier to keep kitchen and bathroom surfaces looking pristine. Indeed, cleaning products and soaps all go much further with soft water. It will also keep rising energy bills in check. Heating a property with a hard water flow causes pipework to continually clog with scale, making the system extremely inefficient. Energy bills reduce with soft water and your boiler will last for years longer, too!

In Hedge End, the water hardness measurement is about 280 parts per million (ppm). Any reading that’s above 200ppm is deemed to be hard, meaning Hedge End is suffering from exceptionally hard water for the majority of the time.

Hedge End – an Overview

Annual rainfall: 30.75inch or 781mm.

Hedge End is a Hampshire town situated just to the east of Southampton, lying within the Borough of Eastleigh. The population of Hedge End stood at 20,790 at the time of the 2011 census.

Until the M27 was built, the nearby village of Botley was better established than Hedge End, but when the motorway came along , Hedge End’s development rapidly took off. The population grew from an estimated 1,000 in the 1950s to around 20 times that figure today.
On 15th July 1944, a V-1 flying bomb fell on HMS Cricket, a military camp just outside Hedge End.

The actor Robin Nedwell, best known for his roles in Shillingbury Tales and Doctor in the House lived in Hedge End until his death in 1999.