Salt Level Won't Drop ** At a Loss ** Need Help

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Norscio

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Excuse the lack of brevity, but I want to lay it all out. When I lived with my girlfriend and her two kids, we would fill my softener with salt about every six weeks. When it was about five years old, it quit. We busted up the sale bridge a time or two but the salt level otherwise stopped going down and eventually I had a plumber out who said it was shot.

Fast forward a couple of years. (Yeah, I know....) I now live alone. I went out with a friend who's a professional handyman, bought a basic GE model and he installed it about four weeks ago. I put in one 40 lb. bag of salt. We entered the settings. The salt level has not dropped at all. I take one bath and one shower a day and aside from the occasional toilet flush or hand washing, that's the extent of my daily water use. I run a load of laundry once every week to 10 days and use the dishwater about twice a month. I put a broomstick in the tank and not surprisingly, there's no salt bridge. Salt on the stick was wet. I see some water at the bottom of the tank, in the back. There's no error message on the display. It's set to recharge every morning at nine. Initially, it said 33 days to empty but has changed twice and now says about the same.

I am at a l loss. Can anyone impart any wisdom? Is there ANY chance this thing is working OK? Might I have a bigger issue? Thanks.
 

Reach4

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Can you tell that your water is not soft? If the the water is soft, stop worrying. I presume you can tell it is hard.

There are few here that are familiar with that unit. I am not familiar either. Ideally somebody who knows the unit will help. But I will throw out some ideas.

In your description you say "It's set to recharge every morning at nine." I presume you mean that if it is due for a recharge, it will recharge at 9 AM. But if there has not been enough water use, it will wait until enough water has been used.

So I am thinking that either

1. the water is not refilling into the salt, so the water stays in the bottom couple inches of the brine tank due to the pickup not drawing down. I don't know if your unit adds the water for a regen a few hours before the brine draw, or if it adds water for the next regen at the end of each regen cycle (as most softeners do).

2. The softener is not adding water nor is it drawing brine during a regen.

3. The softener is not attempting a regeneration.

To troubleshoot, suppose you add about 2 gallons of water to the brine tank. Wait 3 hours. Then trigger a manual regeneration. Observe the results. (water drops? water gets soft? water rises then drops?)

Actually, maybe it is best instead to call customer service at GE. They may have a tested troubleshooting technique for you.
 

ditttohead

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Basic GE model, new and not working... like Reach said, call them. Good luck. Personally, I would recommend replacing it with a Fleck/Clack/Autotrol based system.

If you are going to DIY, you need to get a Hach 5B test kit. This is a simple and inexpensive way of testing your water accurately.
 
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