rjkobbeman
New Member
I have a strange situation that has my water softener installer and myself a little perplexed.
Here is our setup:
Brand new (one year old) house
Copper plumbing
Culligan water softener installed six months ago
Two water heaters: one electric (non-energized) holding tank (pre-heated by GEO system) and one high-efficiency natural gas water heater. They are connected in series.
City water -> water softener -> 1st (electric, non-energized) tank -> 2nd (NG, operational) tank -> house.
The GEO system circulates water from the 1st (electric, non-energized) tank. Should not matter in our problem, but thought I would include our entire setup.
After a month or so after installation, I called the Culligan guy back because we never got soft water. He checked out our unit and could not find any problems. (Our Culligan guy is the same guy who serviced our previous home in another town, but in the same vicinity. Old house was harder water than new house. Never had problems with softener in old house.)
After testing the water in several locations, we started to zero-in on the issue: cold water--soft; hot water--hard.
After even more investigating, we found that water from the 1st water heater was soft. Water from the 2nd water heater was hard. (I am speaking in absolutes here (i.e, "hard" or "soft"), I don't know if the water was varying each step of the way.)
This problem is driving me nuts. It sounds crazy to me... but I have checked the water over and over again and it appears to be OK until the 2nd water heater.
Here is our setup:
Brand new (one year old) house
Copper plumbing
Culligan water softener installed six months ago
Two water heaters: one electric (non-energized) holding tank (pre-heated by GEO system) and one high-efficiency natural gas water heater. They are connected in series.
City water -> water softener -> 1st (electric, non-energized) tank -> 2nd (NG, operational) tank -> house.
The GEO system circulates water from the 1st (electric, non-energized) tank. Should not matter in our problem, but thought I would include our entire setup.
After a month or so after installation, I called the Culligan guy back because we never got soft water. He checked out our unit and could not find any problems. (Our Culligan guy is the same guy who serviced our previous home in another town, but in the same vicinity. Old house was harder water than new house. Never had problems with softener in old house.)
After testing the water in several locations, we started to zero-in on the issue: cold water--soft; hot water--hard.
After even more investigating, we found that water from the 1st water heater was soft. Water from the 2nd water heater was hard. (I am speaking in absolutes here (i.e, "hard" or "soft"), I don't know if the water was varying each step of the way.)
This problem is driving me nuts. It sounds crazy to me... but I have checked the water over and over again and it appears to be OK until the 2nd water heater.