whitedavidp
New Member
Similar, perhaps, to this discussion... but a bit different. Maybe someone can offer insight and/or solution...
Our home was purchased, nearly new, some 12 years ago. We live on an island in the middle of Puget Sound and our water district uses wells. The water here is often hard and contains minerals such manganese, calcium, and some iron (so we are told).
So this is likely why our house came with a Kenmore UltraSoft 175 softener installed. It has generally worked quite well over the years - especially after I stopped using pellet salt and keeping more than 1 bag of salt in it at any one time. No more salt bridges.
But last summer, our water district did some maintenance work and this entailed supplying unfiltered water for many months. On occasions we had terrible water quality as seen in a white bucket at an outdoor spigot located before the water line enters our home. After getting the data released from our district we found that manganese particularly was, at times, over 4 times the MCL. Despite our best efforts to avoid it, we still got more than we wanted of this ugly water - sometimes the color of a dark beer but mostly the color of strong tea - inside our home. Thankfully, the project is over now and while we still get some discolored water, it is much better.
But in the aftermath of all of this we have regularly encountered dark brown water for a period virtually any time the night time recharge runs - which is not all that often. Usually we see it most in the toilet tank which is the closest fixture to the softener and usually the first water used in the morning after the recharge. Things seem to clear up after a time and multiple flushes.
But this makes me wonder if there is some filth trapped inside the softener that gets churned up during recharge and then settles back down after a while until the next cycle. And that makes me wonder if there is something I should do or have done to eliminate this and possibly avoid it causing problems in the future.
Your comments are appreciated. Thanks!
Our home was purchased, nearly new, some 12 years ago. We live on an island in the middle of Puget Sound and our water district uses wells. The water here is often hard and contains minerals such manganese, calcium, and some iron (so we are told).
So this is likely why our house came with a Kenmore UltraSoft 175 softener installed. It has generally worked quite well over the years - especially after I stopped using pellet salt and keeping more than 1 bag of salt in it at any one time. No more salt bridges.
But last summer, our water district did some maintenance work and this entailed supplying unfiltered water for many months. On occasions we had terrible water quality as seen in a white bucket at an outdoor spigot located before the water line enters our home. After getting the data released from our district we found that manganese particularly was, at times, over 4 times the MCL. Despite our best efforts to avoid it, we still got more than we wanted of this ugly water - sometimes the color of a dark beer but mostly the color of strong tea - inside our home. Thankfully, the project is over now and while we still get some discolored water, it is much better.
But in the aftermath of all of this we have regularly encountered dark brown water for a period virtually any time the night time recharge runs - which is not all that often. Usually we see it most in the toilet tank which is the closest fixture to the softener and usually the first water used in the morning after the recharge. Things seem to clear up after a time and multiple flushes.
But this makes me wonder if there is some filth trapped inside the softener that gets churned up during recharge and then settles back down after a while until the next cycle. And that makes me wonder if there is something I should do or have done to eliminate this and possibly avoid it causing problems in the future.
Your comments are appreciated. Thanks!
