Unlike most other household appliances, water softeners are incredibly low-key. They are also low maintenance, and just hum along and do their job, apart from refilling the salt and entering the regeneration timing parameters. However, there are a few maintenance steps you can take to make your water softener work more efficiently and last longer.
Of course, you can start by looking at the manual, but there are many other ways that goes a long way in protecting your softener. A technician can do this for you, but some of the maintenance can be done by almost anyone.
The Water Softening Cycle
To understand how to maintain your water softener, it’s important to know about the water softening cycle as it occurs in the softener. There are two major components in a water softening system, the resin tank and the brine tank. Some models are ideally the two tanks in one, while some have them separate.
The cycle generally goes as follows: water enters a tank filled with resin beads. Here, any impurities in the hard water are captured. The softened water goes into your homes plumbing system, while the beads are recharged by salt water flowing from the brine tank. The process then starts all over again. Basically, when maintaining and caring for your softener, it mostly boils down to these two tanks.
Both tanks need to be maintained to ensure that your system has the longest lifespan possible, and in some cases, for it to be covered by your home’s warranty.
Checking for Water Hardness from the Softener
This is the first thing you need to do when maintaining your water softener system. It ideally tells you the current condition of the overall system. Fetch some tap water and put a few drops on your testing kit. Based on how the instructions for testing go in terms of water color changes, it should reveal the hardness level of the water, and therefore the status of your softener system.
Maintaining your Brine Tank
The most important thing when it comes to caring for your brine tank is to ensure that you are using the right type of salt, in correct amounts. Ensure that the tank doesn’t run out of salt but take care not to overfill it. Over filling it could lead to the annoying salt bridges or clogs in your system. As a rule of thumb, add salt to the tank when the level has dwindled to about a quarter of the tank.
Cleaning the Brine Tank
The brine tank should be cleaned regularly to make sure that the water softener is always using clean brine to regenerate the resin inside the resin tank. The cleaning should be as follows:
- Turn off the water softening system and get your tank to a low water level.
- Scoop as much brine and salt as you can from the water softener.
- Vacuum and clean out the softener’s resin tank thoroughly (using a shop vac). While the tank doesn’t need to be 100% clean, vacuuming it as much as possible is a great idea.
- Refill the water softener with about 2/3 full of salt
How to Remove a Salt Bridge
You may find out that the water isn’t being softened because a slat bridge has formed inside the brine tank Apec Roes 50 for sale. Salt bridges occur naturally, and they are one of the key reasons you should maintain your tank regularly.
A salt bridge is ideally a hardened layer of salt that forms overtop the water inside the tank. It restricts the flow of salt water (sodium) from the brine tank into the resin, meaning that the resin isn’t cleaned. As such, when you try to soften the water, the resin will already contain some calcium and magnesium deposits, and the water coming from your softener will be harder than usual, as the water test would reveal.
Fortunately, this is a problem you can fix quite easily by yourself. You should ideally clean out your brine tank annually to prevent this problem. But if you do find a salt bridge in your system, here’s how to fix it:
- Turn off your water softening system. Leave the bypass switch turned on such that the water source bypasses your water softener and go straight into your home. This way, there’s still be water in your house while you do the cleaning.
- Break up the salt bridges with a stick. Take a large stick or broom handle to break up any of the hard salt bridge material. Scoop out all the excess salt and brine.
- Dissolve the excess salt. Get hot tap water and pour it on the rest of the salt and let it sit for about 4 hours. Once the salt dissolves into the water, it’ll become brine, and you can regenerate your softener until all the brine you created from the salt bridge is used up.
How to Maintain your Resin Tank
The resin tanks generally don’t require a lot of work during maintenance. However, they will occasionally require some cleaning to prevent sediment damage, or to replace the resin. Resin replacement is largely an easy process, and you can actually save a few hundred dollars if you do it yourself.
You may need to go to your local hardware store with details on the type of tank you have. They’ll then recommend the ideal type of resin to get, and how much of it should be put into the tank. Don’t forget to ask if you should put gravel at the bottom of the tank. Be sure to get a resin funnel and a new distributor tube along with your purchase.
- Turn off the water softening system and put your tank into bypass.
- Scoop out the resin out of the tank, remove the distributor tube, and dump the resin out of the tank.
- Replace the resin and take care not to get the resin or gravel inside the distributor tube.
- Backwash and regenerate a few times.
Maintaining your softener system properly will keep it running as smoothly as it should be. When you make it a normal part of your home maintenance routine, you’ll surely save yourself unnecessary expenses and inconveniencies.