Non-slippery feel

I am not sure how to describe this. I have been making soap for 2 years. Mostly with the same recipe. One batch my husband and I both have found that when rinsing it off it feels like we have hard water again. Does this make sense? Normally with soft water and my soap there is a slippery feel when you rinse. He commented on it and I noticed it as well. Not necessarily at the beginning of the bar though, I noticed it about halfway through, so did my husband. The only difference in that particular bar would be the FO (new one I've never used) and also Jojoba beads, I added those as an exfoliant. This is the first test of a soap with Jojoba beads. Could it be the FO? The beads? Any advice?
My recipe is
Lard 50%
Coconut oil 30%
Olive Oil 15% (sometimes pomace, sometimes light or evoo, depending on if I want a faster trace)
Castor oil 5%
Thank you for your help!

you need to use chelator, I have a very hard water , city water, and without chelator the feel is not nice. I use EDTA but you can use Sodium Citrate too, and CA , we have a thread about ca in soaps

It might not be the soap. I notice a change in the feel on my skin when our water softener runs out of salt or otherwise isn't recharging often enough. Have you checked that?

DeeAnna said:

It might not be the soap. I notice a change in the feel on my skin when our water softener runs out of salt or otherwise isn't recharging often enough. Have you checked that?

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I did look in my softener to see if it was out of salt, but it has salt. I'm not sure about the frequency of it recharging. It's a new softener so maybe it's not running as often as our other one? How do I know?

mommycarlson said:

I did look in my softener to see if it was out of salt, but it has salt. I'm not sure about the frequency of it recharging. It's a new softener so maybe it's not running as often as our other one? How do I know?

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If it's a new softener and was set up properly, it should know the hardness of your water. From that it will calculate its own recharge times based on how much water is actually used. (assuming it's not a Kinetico, which has a clockwork mechanism)

But if the installer didn't set the hardness properly, and your water is harder than the factory default setting, it will not be recharging enough leaving you with hard water.

The quickest way to find out if the perceived problem is with the softener is to go out and do an override 'Recharge Now' on the softener. Once it's done recharging the slickness should return if the softener was the issue. In that case, call your provider and get it corrected.

What BG said. Perfect advice.

If you do a manual recharge, remember the hot water heater is currently filled with (theoretically) hard water. Let the hot water heater refill with softened water before you draw any conclusions.

I do want to mention my Kinetico recharges on volume, not time. Maybe there are different models?

DeeAnna said:

What BG said. Perfect advice.

If you do a manual recharge, remember the hot water heater is currently filled with (theoretically) hard water. Let the hot water heater refill with softened water before you draw any conclusions.

I do want to mention my Kinetico recharges on volume, not time. Maybe there are different models?

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Good point about the water heater!

Yes, the Kinetico is interesting in that it's a clockwork mechanism that operates via water pressure instead of electricity. But the mechanism isn't "smart" like the computerized models and relies VERY heavily on the experience of the installer to know your water hardness and usage to set the head's parameters properly. Since they are always set up by professional installers, this shouldn't be a problem. However, if any of those parameters change over time, you might need to call them back to readjust.

For example, I had a Kinetico softener installed in 2001 when we had two teenage girls, a tween girl and a baby girl in addition to Mom and Dad. We used A LOT of water and the softener was set up for that. Worked great. But I never had it adjusted as kids grew up and moved out and water usage decreased. By the time the softener failed in 2015 it was recharging two to three times more often than required. The GE softener I replaced it with immediately cut my salt usage by 2/3 simply by recognizing and adjusting for our current conditions all by itself.

DeeAnna and BG, I called my water softener folks and talked to them. My daughter and her husband and 3 kids moved in with us about 6 weeks ago, they are renovating their new home and are staying here in the meantime. It appears that my softener can't keep up with the new volume of usage. It's on an "as needed" basis and if I want more volume of soft water I need a bigger softener. I don't want to get a bigger one since they will likely only be here another month or so. This appears to be the issue as this morning when I showered my soap felt slippery and lovely as usual. Thank you for your advice!

mommycarlson said:

DeeAnna and BG, I called my water softener folks and talked to them. My daughter and her husband and 3 kids moved in with us about 6 weeks ago, they are renovating their new home and are staying here in the meantime. It appears that my softener can't keep up with the new volume of usage. It's on an "as needed" basis and if I want more volume of soft water I need a bigger softener. I don't want to get a bigger one since they will likely only be here another month or so. This appears to be the issue as this morning when I showered my soap felt slippery and lovely as usual. Thank you for your advice!

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If they're only going to be a few weeks you might be able to cheat the system a bit to ensure softened water.

Go out every night before bed and initiate a manual recharge while you sleep. Assuming your resin bed is big enough to last for a full day's water use, that should keep you in soft water all the time.

The downside is recharging more often than strictly necessary and using more salt, so you might try stretching it to every other day and see if it stays soft for you. And keep an eye on the salt level.

But even if you don't want to do all that, you could at the least do a manual recharge before known big usage days - like laundry day. And of course, any time the water feels hard again, you can do a manual recharge immediately.

Hope this helps!

Thank you BG, so far it's only happened that one day. But I will keep this in mind. At least now I know if it feels like it's not softened any more I can do a quick recharge, thank you for that. I had forgotten how lively a house is with all these extra littles around I raised 4 and have 7 grandkids but none of the grandkids have lived with us until now. It's so fun and rather exhausting, and really rough on my soaping time!