stockman20
New Member
Hi all,
I have a private well with a GE whole-house filter and GE GXSF30H cabinet water softener that is about 13 years old. We have owned the house for four months.
Up until this past weekend the softener was working great - using salt normally and producing nice, soft water clear of odor and bad taste. After a recharge the GH is at about 20ppm. However, once every month or so we have to do extra cleaning on our toilets because iron builds up on the bottom of the bowel. We have the same problem with the tub.
I'm sure we have plenty of iron in our water (have not tested for it) but I figured the least I could do would be to follow GE's instructions in the softener manual for combating iron. Maybe it would help clear up the toilets and maybe not - at the least it should clean the resin; or so I thought. So, last Saturday I used Super Iron Out (as recommended by GE) to flush the resin bed (1 cup with half gallon of water down the brine well then recharge, according to the directions) and since the salt level was low added some new Diamond Crystal pellet salt with Iron fighting additives. I was previously using the Morton standard yellow bag pellet salt. I performed a recharge after adding the salt and SIO, but after it completed the cold water had an strong odor and metallic taste to it. Per the instructions on the SIO I ran the cold water to flush it out and then performed another recharge. Several recharges later, and after running the cold water for hours I still can't get the odor/taste removed. I am absolutely stumped as to what is causing it. The water being produced is just as soft as before, about 20ppm GH, but now has this odor and bad taste. Do you folks have any ideas? Did the SIO destroy my softener? I wish I could better describe the odor; I want to say it's sulfur like but am not an expert so I can't be sure.
One thing I discovered is that if you fill up a glass and set it on the counter for a couple minutes both the odor and bad taste disappear, which leads me to believe that some sort of gas is causing the problem. I've called GE and Summit Brands, but neither had much of an answer.
I have also tried sanitizing the water softener per GE's instructions (using bleach) but to no avail - the odor and taste remain.
I know it's the water softener because if I bypass it and run the hard water through the pipes it has the expected "earthy" hard water smell. But as soon as I un-bypass the softener the water produces the distinctive odor again. My point being that the water from the softener smells much worse than the untreated hard water directly from the well.
Sorry for the long post but i wanted to provide as much info as I could.
Thanks in advance everyone!
I have a private well with a GE whole-house filter and GE GXSF30H cabinet water softener that is about 13 years old. We have owned the house for four months.
Up until this past weekend the softener was working great - using salt normally and producing nice, soft water clear of odor and bad taste. After a recharge the GH is at about 20ppm. However, once every month or so we have to do extra cleaning on our toilets because iron builds up on the bottom of the bowel. We have the same problem with the tub.
I'm sure we have plenty of iron in our water (have not tested for it) but I figured the least I could do would be to follow GE's instructions in the softener manual for combating iron. Maybe it would help clear up the toilets and maybe not - at the least it should clean the resin; or so I thought. So, last Saturday I used Super Iron Out (as recommended by GE) to flush the resin bed (1 cup with half gallon of water down the brine well then recharge, according to the directions) and since the salt level was low added some new Diamond Crystal pellet salt with Iron fighting additives. I was previously using the Morton standard yellow bag pellet salt. I performed a recharge after adding the salt and SIO, but after it completed the cold water had an strong odor and metallic taste to it. Per the instructions on the SIO I ran the cold water to flush it out and then performed another recharge. Several recharges later, and after running the cold water for hours I still can't get the odor/taste removed. I am absolutely stumped as to what is causing it. The water being produced is just as soft as before, about 20ppm GH, but now has this odor and bad taste. Do you folks have any ideas? Did the SIO destroy my softener? I wish I could better describe the odor; I want to say it's sulfur like but am not an expert so I can't be sure.
One thing I discovered is that if you fill up a glass and set it on the counter for a couple minutes both the odor and bad taste disappear, which leads me to believe that some sort of gas is causing the problem. I've called GE and Summit Brands, but neither had much of an answer.
I have also tried sanitizing the water softener per GE's instructions (using bleach) but to no avail - the odor and taste remain.
I know it's the water softener because if I bypass it and run the hard water through the pipes it has the expected "earthy" hard water smell. But as soon as I un-bypass the softener the water produces the distinctive odor again. My point being that the water from the softener smells much worse than the untreated hard water directly from the well.
Sorry for the long post but i wanted to provide as much info as I could.
Thanks in advance everyone!