Hello. I love the information!
We don’t know what to do. We built our home and had our well water tested 14 years ago. A good friend in the industry had a commercial water softener made “to order” for our water. It is a Turbo Soft, Fleck Head with what we believe is a mixed bed of resin. We have had the head replaced at least once, and service calls on the softner because it doesn’t regenerate. The main problem right now is that it doesn’t seem to be finishing its process. Every day, but mainly in the morning we are showering in the sea! The water is so salty it is unbearable. A irony, briny gross experience. We have had another service call out to fix the problem, but it comes right back in a few weeks. We sent our water in to be tested, this is the result; Iron 3.90 mg/L Hardness 440 mg/L Tannin 0.45mg/L Arsenic 2.83 ug/L
We don’t want to spend thousands on a new water softener. (We can’t) What would you suggest? Is it time to replace the unit?, How do you determine this? Is ordering over the internet less expensive because the products are cheap? Should we just replace the resin bed? What kind of resin do we buy? We are confused as what to do. Where can we go or who can we talk to get answers without bias? Our good friend is no longer in our area.
We’ve had Culligan, EcoWater, Atlantis, Commers all out to our home. They all want to sell us their product, of course they price them for $3000 and up!! This is not possible for us. Thanks for your help.
Lane, NW Suburbs of Minneapolis
Answer: Hi Lane, there are a few things to discuss here:
There are a a number of possibilities, but we suspect that the briny water is due to a fouled resin bed. Over time, if elevated levels of iron are present in your water, they can deposit within your resin bed. As more and more of the bed becomes fouled with iron, it is less able to properly rinse the excess sodium that has been drawn into the resin bed during regeneration. Seems as if the softener is set to regenerate at night, and in the morning after the unit regenerates, you use some water, and find it to be salty. You run the water for some time, and the problem dissipates because you have flushed the remaining salt from the bed by running you household water through it. One way to check is to by-pass the softener and see if the water pressure dramatically improves. If it does, try using a product like “Iron Out” that you can find at most home improvement stores. There are instructions for adding this material to the brine solution to clean a fouled bed. We would recommend that you perform a “cleaning process” with Iron Out a few times “back-to-back”.
If this helps, you might consider adding something that we offer called a Res-Up drip feeder to you water softener brine tank. This is a better solution for on-going maintenance of your softener to keep the bed free of iron deposits. You simply pour the Res-Up solution into a small drip feeder tank that attaches to the inside of your brine tank, and it automatically drips solution into the brine, and aids in removing iron during the regeneration process. All of this said, if this does not seem to work, then you might be better off replacing the resin bed or the entire unit.
Regarding purchasing on the internet vs. traditional means, we’ll try to be impartial here, as we are both an internet and brick-&-mortar based company, so we can see both points of view. You don’t need to spend thousands on a new softener – you will note that internet prices are substantially lower than prices offered by some of the companies you mention above. There are many reasons for this. Sometime, an internet based company will offer low quality resin, cheap brine tank design, etc., to get the price down – these are not quality systems, and the old adage “you get what you pay for” applies in this case. However, you can also find very high quality “commercial” softeners on the web. Just take a close look at the site look & feel – if it seems like the site is poorly designed, it’s probably a low cost one – and this sometimes reflects on the seller and the quality of product. Also, review the softener design. A good quality softener will have the type of resin used well advertised, and the product is normally loaded with features. Common indicators of lower quality systems are square brine tanks, generic “high capacity” resin, and not a lot of details about the softener itself. Any good company answers the phone (or get’s immediately right back to you), and you should also consider the level of after sale product support offered.
Although some brick & mortar companies really charge far too much – almost taking advantage of the customer – not all do. Keep in mind that they are providing equipment installation service, and internet based companies generally do not. They have higher overheads to contend with, like salary for installers, tool and vehicle cost, insurance cost, and more. This requires charging more for the system – but if you are familiar with basic household plumbing techniques, or know of a good plumber in your area, then you can save a considerable amount of money with no compromise in quality by purchasing on the internet.
If you want us to recommend replacement resin, we need to know the size of your existing resin tank (diameter and height from the floor to the point at which the valve threads into it). You likely have a mixed bed design, that contains both cation exchange resin for water softening, and anion exchange tannin specific resin. If you want us to recommend a replacement system, we need to know the number of residents in your home, and the diameter of your piping (normally 3/4, 1.0 or 1.25 inch). Hope this helps!