Morton seems fine, still water is hard

[vespid]

My Morton softener is only about 2 years old and will no longer soften my water. I've checked everything and it seems to be working just fine, yet the water still feels and tests as hard (~300 ppm) with two different testers. I'm on city water that is pretty hard to start with (20ish) and I've set the softener to 30. I've removed the salt in the tank to verify there is no bridge. The venturi is clean and the turbine spins (both in feel and by the counter). I've worked it through a manual regeneration and it seems to add and emit water just like it is supposed to when it is supposed to. The valve drain hose drains like it should. I've used a few different cleaning additives every now and then, including just a week or so when I started looking into the problem. I've checked the bypass valve so often I'm seeing it in my sleep. I'm testing the cold water since the water in my heater tank may take a few days to change over after a recharge. I only use Morton's recommended pellet and the salt level does appear to go down over time.

What can I possibly be missing?

Thank you for your time.

 

[vespid]

FWIW, it turns out my water may not be so bad after all. I was primarily testing for TDS, which, I've come to learn, isn't really a reliable indicator of hard or soft water.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Reach4]

Yes. A softener will usually increase TDS a little. The softener replaces calcium and magnesium ions with sodium ions, and thus does not reduce TDS.

Get a Hach 5-b kit to measure your hardness.

 

[ditttohead]

Technically speaking, a TDS meter is not really that at all. It tests the waters conductivity and then algorithmically gives a wild estimate of what the TDS may be.

A TDS tester is really only useful as a comparative indicator for certain water treatment processes like RO, distillation, or DI.

TDS is simply far easier to understand than Resistivity, microhmhos, conductivity, megohms, etc.