I have a Kinetico system from 1994. It has not been giving soft water for about a year now. I’m sure it needs resin, however I would like to make sure it is otherwise functioning before investing in it.
Can you tell me where to begin?
Answer: There are quite a few possible causes of your softener’s performance issues – and breakdown of the resin, or fouling of the resin bed resin is certainly a possibility – but not the only one. We are assuming that the cause is not due to an air-leak, as this problem normally occurs only during installation or when you are moving the water softener. So, before you invest in replacement resin, manually regenerate the unit, and see if the water level in the brine tank slowly recedes. If it does, then this indicates a functioning softener, and replacing the resin may be the next thing to try. If it does not, check the injector and injector screen to see if these are plugged. If they are, clean them well with fresh water, and reinstall. At the same time, remove all of the salt from the brine tank, clean it out with a water wash, and inspect the brine valve to be sure that there are no obvious areas of agglomerated salt plugging the assembly. See if this resolves the problem. If not, the next thing to do is to re-bed the resin tanks with new resin.