Water Softener Madness...

[Fred Pender]

Hi there,

I recently purchased a new home with a dug well water supply. The previous owner has installed quite a water softener system. There are numerous resin tanks (three tall tanks, two shorter ones) and two brine bins. The two shorter resin tanks have a manual regeneration scheduler I think set via a screwdriver while the other larger tanks have a electronic timer/controller set to run once a week for 14 mins. I am quite confused as the one brine bin goes through salt like crazy while the other one rarely needs to be filled up. What is the best approach for coordinating backwashes, etc with such a system? Is there any maintenance recommended for water softeners? If so, how often and what do I need to do?

Thanks in advance,

Fred

 

[ditttohead]

This is an unanswerable question. We need to know what the units are. Since you have two salt tanks, we can only WAG that you have a cation and anion system. Anion systems can be for nitrates, sulfates, dealkalizing, arsenic, uranium, or a dozen other contaminants. The other two systems could be sediment, chemical, iron, manganese, h2s or hundreds of other contaminant reduction methods. Do you have a raw water report? Do you know what medias are inside the tanks?

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Bannerman]

It would be necessary to know which media is contained in each device. While you may be thinking they are all water softeners, such units can contain media for water conditions such as for raising pH, iron reduction, carbon filtration, etc. For most residential applications, a single softener will usually suffice.

If you post the lab test results for your raw well water, that should provide an indication of conditions likely being addressed.

Edit: Ditttohead posted while my comments were being prepared.

 

[ditttohead]

LOL, you usually beat me. How are things up in Canada with this Covid 19 issue?

 

[Bannerman]

Some others and I often post before you as you are often traveling. We typically respond mostly to the more common, straightforward questions but also request further info which will be needed to address detailed or technical concerns such as this thread.

I anticipate with the virus issue, you probably are not traveling too far.

The Premier of Ontario on Monday decreed a mandatory shut down of all non-essential business commencing Tuesday (today) at midnight. There was some confusion as some non-essential small business is often operated without direct contact with others, and many employees in larger companies are working from home. I now see further clarification has been released which I have not yet reviewed.

 

[ditttohead]

Hopefully this mess will conclude soon. We need a good heat wave to finish this off for the year. Unfortunately, Summer is coming late this year. We need a little global warming this year, looks like mother nature is not going to comply for a while.

I was supposed to be is Oregon last week, Hawaii (vacation) this week, Boston next week, Texas the following... all cancelled. Hopefully the travel will start soon again, we have an exciting new piece of equipment to showcase shortly, actually 2 pieces... more to come soon.