Red-orange water after regeneration, Autotrol 255/460 softener.

[Yesnik49]

This softener was installed in 2014 and I recently noticed that sometimes after regeneration if I put softened water (looks clear and clean at the time) in a bowl and let it sit maybe 24 hours it turns an ugly reddish color and is distinctly unpalatable. Usually if I regenerate a second time immediately the water clears up and is ok. I did the routine maintenance with the screen and injector just to be sure that wasn't it. This seemed to help somewhat but did not completely solve the issue. Any ideas as to what I need to do to get the water right the first regeneration?

 

[Reach4]

You should get your water tested, and find out how bad the iron is. You might benefit from a backwashing iron filter before the softener.

You probably should regenerated more often. A softener dealing with significant iron needs to be regenerated more often.

You should do something to add acid to your brine tank. A Res-Up or ResCare dispenser can use a wick to meter a phosphoric acid solution into your brine tank. Or you can add citric acid to your salt.

They also have iron-handling salt that comes combined with citric acid.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[ditttohead]

Iron... nasty stuff.
http://watercheck.myshopify.com?aff=5
this is a link of where to get a very good water test from NTL.

Sounds like your resin is dumping iron, this is normal for a softener being used as an iron reduction system. This tends to be massively inefficient but without an updated water test it is hard to say for sure.