Cold water is soft, hot water is hard

[Gbird]

Hoping for some knowledgeable help. Thank you in advance.

We thought our Kinetico softener was not working. I tried to manually regenerate it but when I turned the dial, it felt like it wouldn't go any further and it did not regenerate. Guess I needed to push past that point.
The serviceman said it was working fine, the cold water was soft, only the hot water was hard. He said the hot water heater needed to be drained.
This sounded really strange to me. Especially since the toilet had tinted water in it. He stated it doesn't take much bad water to turn the treated water bad. How can the hot water leach into the cold line to the toilet?
Can this happen? Cold water treated while hot water isn't? Am I being played?
He said he regenerated it anyway and put Resin Clean in the salt basin. He also said we need an iron tank, at $1900, because of the sulfur. Yes, our water does smell when the softener doesn't work right.

Help, Confused

 

[LLigetfa]

Hot water tank has a bit of a time lag. The hot water coming out now probably went in yesterday and there might have been a regen in between.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Gbird]

Hot water tank has a bit of a time lag. The hot water coming out now probably went in yesterday and there might have been a regen in between.

Thanks for replying to my post.
Our water went bad 4 days prior to service coming out, it seems to be recovering now.
Have you ever heard of only the hot water not being treated while the cold water was fine though?
Just seems weird, it's hooked up to the main water supply coming in. Shouldn't both either be good or bad?

Thanks again

 

[LLigetfa]

Shouldn't both either be good or bad?

Perhaps you did not understand what I meant about the time lag. The water in the hot water tank is older as it takes time to get all used and replaced. Also, there is some amount of blending of new and old so that takes even more time to purge through.
Try draining all of the hot water from the tank and refill it with new. Make sure to turn it off while draining so you don't burn it out.

With my old softener, it would run out of capacity between regens and put out hard water. The wife noticed that the hot water was still soft and so would fill her tub with pure hot and just wait for it to cool down enough to use. Afterward I would do a manual regen of the softener, so the cold water would be soft but then the hot water would be hard due to the time lag I mentioned.

 

[Gbird]

Yes I did not understand the lag time. Thank you much for explaining that to me sir.
I have drained it once and plan on draining it again tomorrow.

Thanks again

 

[Bannerman]

Water treatment equipment is typically installed closeby to where the water line enters the home. Hard, cold water will enter a water softener through the inlet port, and soft water will exit the outlet port where it will branch off to feed the water heater and cold fixtures and faucets throughout the home.

For your hot water to remain hard, the feed line to the WH would need to branch off before the water softener. Although that would be highly unusual, you may wish to inspect and trace the cold water line feeding the water heater to ensure it is not connected before the water softener.

 

[ditttohead]

Assuming the average person uses 50-60 gallons of domestic water per day, the majority of that is cold water. If you have a 50 gallon hot water tank... a few days would be normal.

 

[Gbird]

Thank you for your replies.
The main goes through the softener, then branches off. That's why I thought it was strange. If there was something wrong with the Water heater, I would figure no hot water but not hard water.
Feels like I can't trust the serviceman. Like anything else, sometimes you get a bad one, though I would hope, most are good guys.

 

[Reach4]

Feels like I can't trust the serviceman. Like anything else, sometimes you get a bad one, though I would hope, most are good guys.

Had you drained your WH, the WH would have been filled with soft water. You decided against that.

Sanitizing your well and plumbing would have cut down on the H2S smell, at least for a while.

He also said we need an iron tank, at $1900, because of the sulfur. Yes, our water does smell when the softener doesn't work right.

I suspect he was saying that you should get an iron+sulfur (H2S) system.

Softeners don't remove H2S, but they do remove iron. When removing iron, they need more cleaning and maintenance.

 

[Gbird]

Yes, drained the WH twice since he serviced, per his advise.
When the softener is working, there's no sulfur smell. Do you think the iron filter is still worth the 2k?

Thanks again for your advise sir

 

[LLigetfa]

Yes, drained the WH twice

How did you drain it, by turning off the water supply and using the drain valve or simply by running the tap until it ran cold? If you just ran the tap, then the old and new water mixed inside the tank so what you end up with is a mixture.

 

[LLigetfa]

How are you drawing the conclusion that the hot water is hard? If by smell, that is not an indication of hardness, just indicates the presence of sulfur usually the product of bacteria. Once the bacteria gets established, you might need to sanitize. Turning up the temperature on the water heater is one possible way to get rid of the bacteria, bleach is another. The bacteria can also get established in the supply lines after the water heater so bleach would do a better job of ridding it.

 

[Gbird]

I did it incorrectly the first time. Waited a couple days then turned off the supply and WH and drained again.
The softener serviceman said the hot water was hard and the cold water was soft. He said the softener was working fine.
Everything is working fine now. It just doesn't make sense to me that one line can be soft and the other hard when it splits off after the softener.