Just like other critical systems in your home, your water softener should be maintained to ensure that it lasts as long as possible. A little time completing these preventative maintenance tips can ensure that your water softener keeps your water soft, clean and healthy for years to come. When weighed against the cost of hard water on your health, your plumbing and your appliances, these preventative maintenance tips are simple and affordable.
8 Preventative Maintenance Tips for Your Water Softener
- Check the Salt Levels: In general, most homeowners only need to refill the brine tank for their water softener every two months. While it probably won’t need more water before then, it’s a good idea to check more often just in case. When you open the lid, the salt should be wet and completely covered in water. If the salt is dry and the water level is low, you will need to take time to refill the tank with more salt. If you have an older water softening unit, you should check it more frequently.
- Use Quality Salt: Atlantic Blue Water Services offers quality salt that keeps your water softener functional and in great condition. If you use poor-quality water softener salt, it can increase the wear and tear on your device and shorten its lifespan. You should never use block salt unless your manufacturer specifically states that it should be used.
- Clean the Tank: Another one of the best preventative maintenance tips for your water softener is to clean the tank regularly. Most tanks can be cleaned by waiting until the tank is almost out of salt, cleaning out the remaining salt or sludge and breaking off any sludge from the bottom of the tank. Clean the tank using a mild detergent, warm water and a scrub brush. Once you finish, thoroughly rinse the tank, refill it with water softener salt and then allow it to start working again.
- Clean the Resin Tank: You should not need to do this very often, but you should also know how to clean the resin tank. Every water softener has resin beads inside of it. When you use your device and complete our other preventative maintenance tips, the beads will become less effective over time. Once you have had the same resin beads for seven years, they will likely need to be replaced. We can help in keeping your resin beads in good condition.
- Know the Signs of Issues: Beyond completing these preventative maintenance tips, you should also be able to recognize the symptoms of something being wrong with your water softener. If you start to notice scale, build-up on plumbing devices, water that tastes different, stiff laundry or unusually-frequent regeneration, there might be issues with your water softener.
- Check for Salt Bridges: A salt bridge can stop your water softener from working properly. If you look in the tank and see a thick layer of crust that separates the water and salt in the tank, you have a salt bridge. Quality salt is less likely to have issues, but you should still look for salt bridges when you check the brine tank. If you spot a bridge, you can firmly hit it and it should break up. Avoid pounding it too hard to do any damage to the brine tank itself. Once you have broken it apart, scoop out the larger pieces so that another bridge does not form. Vacuum out the brine tank and replace the salt with fresh softener salt. Finally, you can initialize a regeneration cycle.
- Remove Build-Up: If your water appears to have a brown tint, there’s a chance that iron and manganese have started to accumulate in the mineral tank. It could also mean that there is sediment accumulating in the tank. If the problem is sediment in the mineral tank, you should deep-clean the resin tank and ensure that your sediment filter is working correctly. You should also have a water test performed by Atlantic Blue Water Services to check for other issues.
- Low Pressure: Finally, another one of our preventative maintenance tips is to recognize the signs of low water pressure. If resin beads are damaged by sediment or chlorine, it can cause low pressure in your home. You should never experience this unless there is an issue or the water softener is not correctly sized for your home. Inspections and repairs can fix this problem, as well as cleaning off the sediment pre-filter to avoid sediment accumulation.
Call Atlantic Blue Water Services for Help with These Preventative Maintenance Tips
Atlantic Blue Water Services is here to help homeowners and business owners in need of a quality water test in Pikesville, MD. Call us today to schedule your water testing at 410-840-2583.