Your Water Tastes Salty
Salt should never escape from your water softener. But when it does, you will start to notice the salty aftertaste pretty quickly. This often happens because the softener accidentally leaks salty water into a home's plumbing during regeneration.
The average water softener needs between one and one-and-a-half 40-pound bags of salt per month. This is assuming that the water softener has a small-to-medium capacity of around 32,000-40,000 grains and is serving a family of four.
How long does a 40 lb bag of water softener salt last? We hear questions like this often, and the answer is that it really just depends on your system and your household water needs. While the average family will go through a 40 lb bag about once a month or so, your amount will vary.
No brine tank should ever be FULL of water! Newer water softeners, especially those with digital valves, only have water in the brine tank two hours before the softener goes through a cycle. These “dry” tanks should not have water in them between cycles.
Water softeners today work off gallons going through the system. A house with one person with a 30,000-grain unit will go through a 50Lb bag of salt every five to six weeks.
If your softener is using an excessive amount of salt, it is recharging much more than it should. This can be a result of an out of date hardness setting, or a metering hiccup.
Keep your brine tank at least one quarter full of salt at all times. Don't fill your salt up past 4 to 6 inches below the top of your brine tank. Make sure that your salt level always stays a few inches above the water level in your brine tank.
To put it another way, you should never let your water softener run out of salt. This mistake is likely to cause permanent damage to the system components and your fixtures and appliances as well.
This is a common problem. clogged eductors or jets in the control valve can cause a water softener to not draw in salt. A malfunctioning brine or float valve can be the culprit. A brine line that has a hole in it can also cause a water softener to not use salt.
Adding too much salt to your water quality softener can cause salt “bridging,” or a buildup and solidification of regenerant. This buildup can prevent your system from regenerating properly.
Excessive salt usage can oftentimes be the result of leaking valves or improper controls leading to overflowing brine systems, causing highly concentrated and highly valued salt water to be lost before even entering the regeneration process.
The salt helps to soften the water and gives it a cleaner taste. Even though your water supply will be soft within less than two hours, it will take longer to see the build-up in your plumbing start to diminish. It could take a few weeks before you can see the difference.
The difference in hard water and soft water is the amount of sodium within it. Soft water is safe to drink as the amount of sodium added is very small.
Salt mushing occurs when the salt in the brine tank recrystallizes to create a sludge. A salt bridge is a dome of hardened salt creating an air pocket between the water and salt. Both of these situations prevent proper recharging, and you'll need to check your brine tank to resolve either of these issues.
As mentioned above, the usage will vary depending on your family's needs and the hardness of your water. If your softener is sized and programmed correctly, you will probably use between 40-50 pounds of salt per month. Make sure you check your salt levels at least once every month.
Your salt consumption will depend on the level of water hardness (minerals in your water) and the amount of water your household consumes. The average family of four with hard water (7-10 grains per gallon hardness level) will use about one 40-lb bag of salt each month.
If your water softener stops putting out soft water, or if it ends up running out of soft water quickly, you likely have a damaged bed of resin beads. Resin beads in water softeners typically last about 10 to 15 years.
If you have a wet brine tank, it should have water in it constantly. The overwhelming majority of water softeners that were manufactured prior to 2015 should have a wet brine tank. A dry brine tank probably will not have very much water in it, but it doesn't mean that it will always be dry.
As a good rule of thumb, you should start by setting your water hardness level on your water softener to match the GPG of your water supply. For example, if your report shows you that your water hardness level is 10 GPG, then you need to set your water softener to 10 GPG as well.
Brine Times
As a general rule of thumb, brine meat for about one hour per pound. You can go longer, but keep in mind that it's definitely possible to over-brine your meat. Most over-brining simply makes everything a little too salty, and you can soak the meat in cold water to draw out the excess salt.
The Most Likely Reason You've Got Too Much Water in the Brine Tank: The Injector is Clogged. If that hole becomes clogged, your unit can't suck the brine out. But it will continue to add more water to the brine tank and that's a problem. If this is the case, you just need to replace or clean out that clogged injector.