Source
r/HomeImprovement•
SFWalways

Water softener not working, what else can I check?

I have a Watts Premier AF-40k water softener from Costco that was installed about a year ago, and it's probably only worked for about two months of that year.

It worked okay at first and I basically stopped thinking about it. Eventually I realized I should check the salt level, and it hadn't used any salt in about 6 months. I bought a test kit and sure enough, hard water. After much troubleshooting we realized that the soft plastic drain line was collapsing and creating too much backpressure, so we replaced it with pex.

After fixing the drain line issue we again had nice soft water for about a month, and again I forgot about it. The water started feeling hard after a while so I tested it again, and once more the softener is not working. I have done the following to try to fix it:

  • Broken up the salt to make sure there's no bridging.

  • Cleaned the injector valve and all the accessible tubing.

  • Run it through a regen cycle while watching. The brine is drawing down correctly, and I once skipped over the backflush and got salty tap water, suggesting that the brine is making it into the resin tank.

  • Run it through a high capacity cycle instead of the high efficiency cycle we usually use.

  • Added more salt.

At this point, the system seems to be working, but does not produce soft water. The only thing I can conclude is that the resin itself is compromised in some way. I am planning to try a resin cleaner, but I am reluctant to replace the resin as it is expensive and not guaranteed to work.

TL;DR: what are some potential causes of failure for a 1-year-old water softener that appears to function mechanically?

Posted Dec 20, 2016, 5:07 PM UTC

24
gjs520820•

It sounds like a fouled resin bed. Most resin beds are just polystyrene beads and shouldn't need to be replaced after one year. I would clean the resin bed.

2
SFWalwaysOP•

Thanks, that confirms what I was thinking. Easy enough to try cleaning it anyhow. I'm not quite sure how it became fouled so quickly, but perhaps running it for months when it wasn't drawing salt caused some issues.

1
bigb3•

If it were fouled resin you would get soft water right after the regeneration, but it would run out quickly. Have you checked the clock/electrical 24v ? Check the water wheel that records flow. Check that you are set to use salt and not potassium.

1
SFWalwaysOP•

It has a bit of that "soft water taste" right after regeneration, but tests hard and doesn't feel like soft water. I ordered resin cleaner stuff and will give that a shot anyways, but it doesn't seem to start soft and then run out so perhaps that isn't my problem after all.

The clock seems to be working fine and the flow meter values are reasonable. It doesn't have an option for sodium/potassium (manual says to increase hardness by 30% to compensate for potassium) but I am using standard sodium. I have tried various regeneration parameters including the maximum salt usage and multiple regeneration cycles, but nothing seems to make a difference.

1