Plastic Smell with softener

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jjamison

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I have an established system where I just replaced the water softening components and now my water smells strongly of plastic. My wife refers to it as poison water. I purchased a new Enpress vortech tank, a Fleck 7000 valve, Purolite SST-60, brine tank etc. The smell was present before backwash and doesn’t seem to be abating after a few manual backwashes/regens. Bypassing removes the smell. It’s been years since I’ve installed any resin, but I don’t recall a plastic smell at installation. Have y’all run across this complaint before?
 

ditttohead

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Have you sanitized the resin? It is highly recommended as part of the start up procedure.

Not sure that this would fix anything but... do it regardless.
 

jjamison

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Thanks for the kind reply ditto! Sanitation does not affect the plastic smell. Good suggestion though. Maybe I've just got to wait out the plastic parts degassing. I just don't recall ever having this problem with new parts.
 

ditttohead

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I doubt it is the parts, probably the resin. Try putting the system into backwash, unplug the timer and let it run for an hour. You can divert the drain to the lawn if you are worried about the waste water.
 

jjamison

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Thanks Ditto. You've gotta be right. I've tried to normalize and update everything. Topped off chlorine injection. Refilled the calcite and corosex. And I've been running lots of water through as you're suggesting.
 

jjamison

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Yes, good question Reach.
System is:
Chlorine injection
Retention tanks
Pressure tank
Mineral tank (calcite and corosex)
MTM tank (pot perm regen)
Centaur carbon tank
Softening resin tank (salt regen)
http://mywaterfiltration.blogspot.com/
System has been stable in this form since about 2010 with regular replacement of consumables and maintenance.
It's been much too long since adding/replacing calcite and corosex so I did that yesterday and it seemed to help with the smell flavor issue.
Haven't replaced Centaur carbon in a long while so have that scheduled for Tuesday. Maybe that'll help as well.
Just not sure why smell/flavor was fine before switched out/replaced the resin tank and resin.
And why smell/flavor is fine when bypassing resin tank and resin.
Note: Thursday I switched out the Purolite SST-60 with a batch from a branded bag where I could confirm origin and lot number and this didn't really make a difference (expensive, but at the time I was certain I had a bad batch of resin).
Meaning, to me anyway, it's either the new Enpress vortech tank or Fleck 7000 valve or the resin or how my water in interacting with the resin.
I'm hoping that no matter which of these it is, with the replacement of my carbon and a little more time I'll see improvement.
If carbon replacement doesn't seem to help I'll try an hour's worth of backwash as Ditto suggested.
The smell/flavor is better. I just don't remember a smell/flavor issue in the past with new resin.
My wife will be back from visiting in-laws tonight and can provide an updated smell/flavor evaluation.
As I mentioned previously, when all this started with the original batch of resin, she referred to it as poison water and refused to drink or give it to the pets.
 

Reach4

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Chlorine injection
Retention tanks
Pressure tank
Normally the pressure tank and pressure switch would be before the retention tanks I think. The reason I suspect is that the draw from the pressure tank is usually slower than the flow to the pressure tank.

I am not suspecting that this would contribute toward a plastic smell.
 

jjamison

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Well, that's interesting. I suppose I'd imagined chlorinating the pressure tank was a good idea. Shifting the order would mean, however, I could place my pressure tank before chlorine injection? Even though The Wellmate engineer I spoke to assured me that the bladder in my pressure tank should be fully resistant to chlorine, I'm convinced the couple of bladder leaks I've had over the last five or so years is related. The real question is where to put the scorpions. Before or after the retention tanks? Just kidding. Only saw one scorpion in Alabama first 30 years or so of my life, but Arkansas is different.
 

Reach4

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It seems to me that if the injection is controlled by the pump running, then you would want the injection before the pressure tank. If the injection was proportional to the flow, then it probably would not matter. But maybe I am missing something.
 

Bannerman

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As Dittohead recommended, sanitize the resin. Add ~1/8 cup of un-scented chlorine bleach to the softener's brine tank and then initiate a manual regeneration to draw the chlorine solution through the resin tank. See if that resolves the odor issue.

... assured me that the bladder in my pressure tank should be fully resistant to chlorine, I'm convinced ...
The pressure tank bladder should not be subjected to constant chlorine exposure. Occasional sanitation with a mild chlorine solution should not be an issue.

The pressure tank and pump pressure switch are to be located before other water treatment processes. As ferrous iron will start to be oxidized immediately from the point of chlorine injection onward, the water line and contact tank could become blocked with ferric iron sediment. If blockage occurs before the pump pressure switch, the switch may not sense pressure properly which could cause the pump to continue to run continuously, pumping against a blocked line.

Since the pressure tank provides some water to the fixtures before the pump kicks-in, the chlorine injection pump should be controlled by a flow switch located downstream of the pressure tank, not by the pump pressure switch.
 
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jjamison

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That's good advice Bannerman. The chlorine injection is controlled by a flow switch I installed. The flow switch also controls a low voltage line that runs to a LED in the living area such that I can see a blue light whenever the well pump is running (or rather when there is water flow, which makes it somewhat of a leak detector too I suppose). Your ordering of components makes sense and I agree. It may be that I won't get around to doing it until my next bladder fails, sigh. But you have me thinking about it which is good. I chlorinated the resin as suggested. Last might my wife evaluated the water as 20% weird tasting. I'm currently thinking we have just forgotten what softened water tastes like as I'd allowed the last batch of resin to be rarely regenerated and eventually potentially fouled such that we weren't getting much softening anyway. I may plumb a line to the kitchen that skips the softening step. Thanks y'all!
 

Radioduran

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I just purchased and installed the same sst-60 resin. I am having the same water odor problem. Any solutions? Wife is not happy. Aromatic compounds, benzene polymer leachables are bad for health.
 

jjamison

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I can *not* speak to chemistry of softener resins. What I wonder is did we both get bad batches, has something changed in the manufacturing, is there something specific about our water conditions, or are our wives persnickety? In any case, it has been almost three weeks and I've noticed about an 80 percent improvement. Mind you, the water is still 20% smelling and tasting off. My solution was to run a Pex line from right before our water softener to the kitchen faucet. My house is copper, but with the new connectors out there it was super easy with no special tools. With a crawlspace it was easy anyway. BTW, I tried baking soda and citric acid etc. etc. Baking soda seemed to really help as long as there was trace baking soda present in the water. Might be a chemistry clue there, but I ended up just getting a new batch of sst-60 resin and it smelled the same, but as I said almost three weeks later better.
 
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Radioduran

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Thank you for a quick reply. This could be a property of this new sst-60 resin. Maybe preservative or process impurity. I am glad to hear the smell decreased over time. I just initiated third regen, and put have cup of ResCare for a good measure. Yesterday, I put RO under the sink in a kitchen for consumption. Still, it would be nice not to smell softened water in a shower. Please let me know if you learn of anything new. The manufacturer should be ashamed!
 

jjamison

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You should probably contact Purolite tech support with your lot number (if you still have the packaging). Purolite keeps samples of the lots they can test. I agree it's frustrating.
 

JonnieBlaze

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Just wanted to comment that I had the same issue with plastic smelling water, and we have the SST-60 resin in common. I didn't think to keep the lot number and didn't want to take the control valve off to get a sampling of the resin to send to Purolite. I installed a multipure carbon filter for drinking water and just dealt with the smell from the remaining faucets. It took probably a year but has finally gone away completely.
 
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