Hard water.. Scaling. Distillation question

I have diy aeroponics tubs. Ive grown with tap water with no problems. Ive done r.o. as well.

I knew a fella that lived a town over and he was complaining about the shitty water. He had a coffee maker that was crusted with scale or whatever the hell you call it.

Well now im in that town and doing a new set up.
I made a little 3 gallon bucket of light nutes for some seedlings and its got a top layer of nasty scale.

I wrapped my water pumps in pantyhose to help filter and make things easier when i harvest and clean up. ( my roots eventually grow into the res and can go into the pumps)
So i only ran these pumps inside 7 gallons of water, and already there is thick tds built up at the intake. I had to scrape it off the panty hose.. Kinda gross. How the hell is a whole town drinking this shit?

During flower, i might be needing 10 gallons of water a day.. With r.o. ill be paying for and wasting so much water..
So im thinking to myself, hey can i just distill my own water? Would that be more eficient?

Any smart guys out there have any input on this?

Is there a more efficient way to do this? Are there filters that will remove the hardness but not necessarily clean it as good as r.o.? I dont need to have perfect water for my children, just something manageable

Are you sure the build up is the solids in the water and not your nutes? I get buildup a couple of places in my system and it's just salts. Is there any need for the pantyhose? That's quite a small mesh size.. surely dissolved solids aren't going to ruin your pumps, at least not before the natural life of the pump anyway. Just use a grid, intake grille, to keep the roots out.

Have you considered using nutrients specifically formulated for hard water? Just how hard is the water? What's the EC say straight out the tap? I have used RO feeding schedules with tap water up to 200ppm without issue. Above that, you may see some issues but nothing that can't be managed. Most likely to happen with very hard water is an Mg def. That can be resolved easily enough by just adding in Mg. Keep your nutes on the low side so that you'll avoid locking anything out and watch your pH. I remember using Ionic hardwater formula when I lived in a hard water area and they seemed to work well. I think it was a 2 parter with stabilisers.

You say you've moved one town over.. I don't know the distance involved but is the water actually wildly different? Let us know the PPM.

I dont have a ppm meter. Didnt need one before with flora series...
Could it be because im using old nutes that were sitting for over a year?