Care And Maintenance Of Your Water Softener System

Most water softener systems do require a small amount of attention. If nothing else, it would be a good idea to keep up with the salt usage of your system. Running a water softener out of salt (or potassium chloride) will not damage it, but it will cause the water softener to lose it's ability to remove hardness from your water.

Beyond adding salt to your system, there is a procedure you can follow to greatly increase the effective life of your water softener and the media resin. The first consideration is flow. If you have a brine line or drain line restriction, your system will not function properly. The water, brine and waste that is circulated and flushed out during the regeneration process will partially remain in your water softener's mineral tank causing vile-tasting water. Freeing the drain line, drain line control and brine line from debris and build up is fairly simple to do.

Put your water softener into bypass mode. Different systems employ different methods of doing this. Refer to your owner's manual for your system's method. Disconnect the brine line from the brine tank and the water softener control valve. There should be a small cylindrical screen inside one end of the brine line. Remove it and clean it with hot, soapy water. Check the brine line for obstructions and remove any that you find. Locate your brine injector and use a paperclip or pin to clear that of any obstruction. Everybody knows Bob Villa. His web site has a descriptive article for cleaning your brine injector. Replace the cylindrical screen and re-attach the brine line.

The second step is to check your drain line for ease of flow. Remove it from the control valve. There will be a screen-type fitting inside the control valve where this hose attaches. Clean any obstructions for that first. Now inspect the drain line. If there are no apparent obstructions, force some water through it with a garden hose. The inside diameter (ID) should be around 1/2 inch and most garden hoses are 3/4 inch connections so use an adapter or nozzle with a tight fit. Water should flow down the line freely. If it does not, inspect the lenght of the hose if it is opaque or transparent. If not, remove the exit end of the hose and look for obstructions. If there are none and you are still not getting a free flow through the hose, replace it.

It is important to insure that the exit end of your hose is not butting up against anything whether it is running into a sewer drain pipe or to the outdoors. Re-attach the hose, open your bypass and you're done.

How often should this procedure be performed? Of course that depends on the overall flow of your particular system. A good rule of thumb would be once every 15,000 to 20,000 gallons of water through your water softener. That may be too often for a newer system on relatively clean water as opposed to an older system on high-mineral or iron water. I check our local customer's systems about once every 6 or 7 months if they are using municipal treated water.

Do you have a maintenance tip for your water treatment system? It would be great to hear from you. Send us a description.