Water heater causing hard water?

[Gbird]

Hoping for some knowledgeable help. Thank you in advance.
I also posted this on the softener forum.

Kinetico repairman saying water heater causing hard water. Water heater is a 2015.
Thought our softener was not working. The repairman said it was working fine, the cold water was soft, only the hot water was hard. He said the hot water heater needed to be drained.
This sounded really strange to me. Especially since the toilet had tinted water in it. How can the hot water leach into the cold line to the toilet?
Can this happen? Cold water treated while hot water isn't? Am I being played?

Help, Confused

 

[LLigetfa]

Why are you double posting?

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Gbird]

Didn't know if someone on the water heater side has heard of the water heater causing this issue.
Since it could be a water heater issue, thought I'd condense and post here.
Is that wrong?

 

[Jadnashua]

When was the softener added relative to the WH? With hard water, a WH will slowly cause minerals to be deposited in the tank. If you then install a softener, that water will slowly absorb (actually dissolve) those minerals as it passes through the WH. Three things:
- eventually, all of the minerals will be dissolved and thus, the water coming out will be the same as what's going in.
- you replace the WH with a new one that doesn't have any minerals in it
- you try to drain it (which often doesn't work fully), and live with it being hard for less time than the first situation, assuming you get anything out.

 

[Gbird]

Thanks for the reply sir.
The water heater and softener are both 2015, within months of each other.
The main water goes through the softener then branches off to hot/cold, if that helps.

 

[Jadnashua]

If the WH and softener were both installed at the same time, the hardness is not coming from the WH...but, hot water tends to allow more mineral deposits than cold in the pipes, so it could take awhile for that to dissolve.

 

[Ryan Symons]

Your kinetico tech has no clue what he is talking about. I own a water conditioning company and worked for a kinetico dealer for 11 years prior. Hard water on the hot side and soft on the cold means you have intermittent hard water...the tank gives you a little bit of history. The softener is likely metering and regenerating as it should. The biggest reasons for this problem are:
1. Toilet fill valve not shutting off completely, dripping faucet or anything that consumes your soft water at a pace too slow to be metered. The water gets softened but not counted against the capacity.
2. Salt sludge in the bottom of the brine drum is a huge issue for kinetico softeners because they use a float to shut of the refill instead of a timed refill. If the area where the water is supposed to be is full of sludge then you don't get a full salt dosage on regeneration. Clean out the tank and throw away any mushy salt. Don't overfill the salt tank. A bag or 2 at a time is all you need to have in there unless you have relatively bad water.
3. Water dripping constantly from the drain line when not in regeneration. As above the water gets softened but not metered causing hard water. The most common cause is bad drain/control valves and seals although many other things can cause this issue. If this is the case only your dealer can help you.