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Water Softener Maintenance

Written By: City View Plumbing & Heating

Water Softener Maintenance

Water softener maintenance is critical to maintaining the plumbing in your home. It also makes your skin feel softer, and soap work better. Many people forget to refill their salt tank, also called a brine tank, on a regular basis.  We suggest checking your salt level in your brine tank monthly or at least as often as changing the air filter in your furnace. There are only a few things you need to do to maintain your water softener in tip top shape.

  1. The first and most important thing you can do is maintain the proper salt level. We recommend that if you see water in the brine tank it is time to add salt. Too much salt isn’t always better either, all you need in your brine tank is one bag of salt above the water line in the tank. Generally, this is about 3/4 of the way full of salt. DO NOT FILL THE BRINE TANK ALL THE WAY UP. There are a few types of salt we recommend using salt pellets which are generally a higher purity.

Note: It is helpful to use a broom handle and gently push down on the salt to make sure a salt bridge, which is when the salt sticks together and doesn’t fall to the bottom causing a “salt bridge,” has not formed in the brine tank.

  1. A second important thing to do when filling the salt in your brine tank is to make sure that the clock is set to the correct time. Most water softeners are set to regenerate at 2 a.m. If the clock is not set to the right time it could lead to the water softener regenerating during the middle of the day.
  2. The last thing to do is check all of the connections on the water softener and make sure nothing is leaking including the drain where the water softener dumps into. Occasionally the water softener will get stuck in a mode and continue to dump water down the drain which is not only wasteful it can be costly.

As always if you are worried about anything give us a call and we can come over and walk you through the whole process.