We have a 25 year old Kinetico dual tank softener which worked well up until last winter (yay Kinetico). Last winter the water got an odor and a color, and I brought a sample into the local dealer that sold us the softener. Options were to rebed or replace. Since "replace" is $thousands, I had it rebedded for ~$700.
The next day, the cold water (but not hot water) flow at a couple of faucets was way down, so I called the guy and he said probably a problem with our well - just a coincidence. And I discovered that grit (that I could feel but not see so well) was clogging the screens at these faucets. So I replaced the sand filter of the well, but trapped very little sand and the problem continued to reoccur in the months since. Last week I was cleaning the filter at the kitchen sink (for the 5th or 6th time), and I flushed the lines and a bunch of obvious resin came out.
Took the water+resin back to the dealer, and they responded with some alarm and had a guy out the same day to replace the resin tanks with new tanks for no additional charge (yay!) and he flushed the system for 15 minutes. But it didn't solve the problem- the next day more resin, more clogging. I bypassed the softener for about a week and no resin, no clogging. Today I put the softener back in the line and the first faucet puts out _massive_ amounts of resin (ten seconds of flow = ounce or two of resin in the bottom of the bucket).
The local dealer said before if that didn't fix the problem, we should put in a new softener. But I'm slightly skeptical - how hard is it to keep resin in (new) tanks instead of massively leaking into the output water line? Could a problem in the _rest_ of the softener result in pumping large amounts of resin into the output line? Do I really need to replace the whole softener?Haven't talked to the dealer again yet.
Advice?
The next day, the cold water (but not hot water) flow at a couple of faucets was way down, so I called the guy and he said probably a problem with our well - just a coincidence. And I discovered that grit (that I could feel but not see so well) was clogging the screens at these faucets. So I replaced the sand filter of the well, but trapped very little sand and the problem continued to reoccur in the months since. Last week I was cleaning the filter at the kitchen sink (for the 5th or 6th time), and I flushed the lines and a bunch of obvious resin came out.
Took the water+resin back to the dealer, and they responded with some alarm and had a guy out the same day to replace the resin tanks with new tanks for no additional charge (yay!) and he flushed the system for 15 minutes. But it didn't solve the problem- the next day more resin, more clogging. I bypassed the softener for about a week and no resin, no clogging. Today I put the softener back in the line and the first faucet puts out _massive_ amounts of resin (ten seconds of flow = ounce or two of resin in the bottom of the bucket).
The local dealer said before if that didn't fix the problem, we should put in a new softener. But I'm slightly skeptical - how hard is it to keep resin in (new) tanks instead of massively leaking into the output water line? Could a problem in the _rest_ of the softener result in pumping large amounts of resin into the output line? Do I really need to replace the whole softener?Haven't talked to the dealer again yet.
Advice?