When my softer uses salt and regenerates it does not fill back up with water. How do I get water to fill up without manually doing it my self? Thank you.
Answer: First, a little background on how a water softener functions. All standard down-flow water softeners have an initial backwashing stage that cleans and flushed the resin bed. This is followed by a brine draw stage, during which all of the water in your brine tank should be drawn back into the softener during regeneration. The brine draw – slow rinse process takes 60 minutes. After all of the brine solution is drawn from the tank, the check valve in your brine tank shuts off so that air cannot be pulled into your piping. During the remainder of the 60 minutes, the resin column is rinsed. The next stage is a “reverse flow” fast rinse to pack the bed down into normal position, and the last stage is the brine tank refill (which refills with a pre-determined amount of water on your salt setting). The line that connects the control valve to the brine tank is bi-directional, and allows both water refill and brine draw through the same path.
If your unit is not automatically refilling your brine tank with water, then it is also likely that it is not drawing brine into the softener during the brine draw process. If this is the case, then you would not be supplied with softened water as the cation exchange process did not occur.
Try cleaning your injector and injector screen. You might also try and disconnect the brine line at the point that it attaches to the fitting on the brine tank. Put your unit into the brine refill position, and see if there is a noticeable water flow. If so, then the problem is located in your brine valve assembly (this is the assembly located in the well inside of the brine tank). If there is no water flow, then the problem is within your control valve, and cleaning the injector and screen as noted above may resolve the problem.
If you can let us know the specific model control valve that you have, we will be pleased to try and help you further.