Salty hard water after regeneration

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croixboy

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Hopefully someone here can give me some direction.

I have Salty, Hard Water after regeneration. Not a little salt... A lot. The spigots also sputter a little like there is air in the lines after regeneration.

My second well is 5 years old. The first well lasted 10 years and clogged with iron. The softener has always performed well until recently when the water became hard, and now salty after each regeneration. I called the company who installed the second well. They "cleaned the screen" and replaced the valves, and tightened the brine line at the tank. He said mechanically the unit works. He manually regenerated and said I should be good to go in about 2 hrs. Afterwards, The water was still salty at the faucets. I called the service tech and he said to manually regenerate a couple times. The water was still salty at the faucet.

I was out of town on business last week, so wasn't home to work on it after the service call. Today I cleaned out the brine tank. It had 15 years of hard mush salt at the bottom. I cleaned out the tank, poured warm water down the float assembly and removed all the water. I then put 4 gallons of water in the tank, and regenerated the system. All seemed to work properly. I put 2 new bags of crystal salt in and waited a few hours to create some brine, then manually regenerated. I have salt at the faucet still.
The unit is a 15 yr old 48,000 grain softener. 54" high x 10" tank. Autotrol 440i control at the top.

Is there anything I can do or test to find the problem? Any ideas?
 

Reach4

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After 15 years of use, I expect the resin needs replaced. Given that you have iron, I would expect that the resin would have been worn out quite a while ago. However old resin is not going to cause the water to taste salty. Salty would be what you would expect if the rinse phase was not working well. Is the ball in the clear housing going up and down readily? Old worn out resin would explain the water staying hard and the iron not being reduced.

You might consider replacing the whole softener.

I suggest a water test of your raw water. I suggest Kit65. http://www.karlabs.com/watertestkit/ to get a good rundown of your water.

If you have a lot of iron, I suggest that you consider an iron (plus other stuff maybe) backwashing filter to treat your water before the softener.

I suggest you also get a Hach 5B hardness test to monitor hardness after the softener in the future.
 

croixboy

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Thank you for the reply, I'm certainly considering a new unit but want to look at all my options first. Where would this ball in the housing be? I don't see a ball anywhere.
 

ditttohead

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Salty water can be caused by many possible problems. A short or broken manifold pipe, or a bad riser o-ring, this is usually easily tested by putting the system into brine draw and seeing if you have salty water to the drain immediately. It should take a few minutes for salty water to get to the drain. Worn flappers, bad resin, etc... 15 years, with iron... agreed, it is time to get an updated water test and you might want to consider updating your equipment. At minimum, a water test and a valve rebuild/new resin. You could get another 15 years out of your system, the 255 is a very strong valve that can last for many decades.
 

croixboy

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Thanks to all that replied. I just wanted to give you an update and let you know what I did.
I had the resin replaced and new turbulator installed.
Our softener is now working like a champ, water is silky soft, and the salty water is gone!
 

Reach4

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Very nice that it is working. I wonder if during the process, something got cleaned out in the controller. I guess I would be surprised that old resin would cause salty water by itself.
 

ditttohead

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Old resin can cause salty water, but this is more typical in larger commercial units than in smaller residential units and is not very common. I wonder if the turbulator had something to do with it. Maybe a bad check on the riser, that would make sense.

Congrats, the Autotrol valve is a workhorse and will last you a long time.
 
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