New water softener install - YELLOW water!

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pjfontes

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I'll keep this short and simple...

Is it normal to have 10-20 seconds of yellow water after installing a brand new water softener? It was the colour of morning pee. :p

A few points
- Well water
- Ran hard water for almost 2 weeks. softener was preforming poorly for at least 6 months. (moved in 6 months ago)
- Fine mesh resin
- water was turned on for about 5-10 seconds during first regen. (forgot to tell the wife not to use the water)
- .02 iron after birm/aeration system. 4ppm before.
- Just finished redoing a bunch of plumbing and doubled my flow from <5gpm to 10gpm (@ bath tub)

Does the colour come from the new resin? Or is it possible that iron build-up, from before the iron filter was installed, can be washed out of the (copper) pipes?

Thanks.
 

Mialynette2003

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Anytime you relax the pipes (turn water off) you may get elements dislodging from the pipes. Also, resin will have a color throw when new, but you stated the unit was in a regen so I think the color came from the pipes.
 

ditttohead

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Some resins recently have been giving off a lot of color throw. Poor quality control as companies race to be the cheapest. Several companies have brought equipment to us for testing and we have seen this at least 6 times in the past 5 months. The strange thing is, new resin will give off a yellowish color, this is normal, but it should rinse out fairly quickly. A few regenerations and it is always gone. This current problem seems to keep kicking off color for thousands of gallons, to the point where we give up and sell the customers new resin to fix it.

Have you had soft water before? A new softener install will potentially giove your water an off color for many months as the softer buildup of iron, scale, etc is easily dislodged especially with soft water. My old house had nearly 80 year old galvanized, it was 6 months until I got clear water running after I installed the water softener.
 

pjfontes

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I'm 99% it's the resin now. I couldn't believe how yellow it was! I guess these companies are skipping the step where they clean their product before they bag it? I replaced "regular" cation resin at my old house and never noticed colour or smell issues. I've become hyper-sensitive to the properties of my water since moving out of the city :D

First draw this morning was clear (well, minus the 1-2ppm tannins). The water had an unfamiliar smell for a few min this morning but went away.

There's some evidence that the house had the same culligan water softner since ~1994. The water softener wasn't working well when I moved in 6 months ago. Like mia described, huge shots of brown water would burp out of the pipes every time I did some plumbing and introduced air into the pipes. After doing plumbing every weekend for 3 weeks most of the brown stuff was purged before I fired up the softener.

Thanks for the replies. I was in a panic yesterday and couldn't find a threads related to what I was seeing.

Anyone reading this in the future will know that:
Yellow/Brown when relaxing the pipes = Normal
Yellow when starting a new water softener = Normal
Soft water, after years of hard water/iron, will clean crap from inside old pipes!
 

ditttohead

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Part of the problem is the new regulations on resin (not really "new"). They are mostly solvent free. Older resins would rinse down very quickly, newer resins that are certified as solvent free may take a little while longer to rinse down. When you install new resin, it should be regenerated a couple times prior to putting it online. It should also be sanitized but most companies skip this step.
 

pjfontes

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Dittohead, I wanted to run regen a few times, but I worry about the impact on my septic system.... I drained all of my equipment 2 hours prior.

Am I being paranoid? Is it ok to dump huge amounts of solids-free water into my ("modern") septic system?
 

ditttohead

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You could put the system into backwash and unplug the unit. Then simply watch the water and run it until it is clear. If the resin is a bad batch it wont run clear even after 20-30 minutes. Most septic systems can handle considerable water, its the solids they will have trouble with, especially if it is just a one time water load.
 
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