DIYbanter - View Single Post - Rainsoft water softener. Not using any salt?

bremen68

wrote:
Hello I hope someone can help me.
We moved into our home about a year ago and it has a Rainsoft water
softener that was not hooked up. (The owners said they didn't like the
way it tasted and they unhooked it) My husband hooked it back up about
a month ago and we put two bags of salt in it. From what I can tell it
has not used any or very little salt. It does run through its cycles
and water goes out the drain. But should I see water in the salt and
how much? I can not tell that there is any water going into the salt at
all? Thanks for looking and hope someone can shed some light on this
it is making me crazy. (I have never had a water softener and don't
know what I am looking for it to do.) LOL Thanks again!

Howdy Tammy,

Basically the water softener works like this... Your water goes through
the tank with resin pellets in it, the pellets take the hardness out of
the water and gather it on themselves. After so much water is run
through the system it need to be "recharged" . This is done by
flushing the resin tank with salt water. The system is usually set to
do this at night so the salt water doesn't get into your pipes for you
to drink. The system automatically fills the salt tank with water,
then draws that water into the resin tank, it then flushes the resin
tank with fresh water and that's the water that you see going down the
drain. After it clears the resin tank it resets and the cycle starts
again.

Normaly if the system is working correctly you shouldn't really get a
"taste" from having the softener. It doesn't add salt to your water to
soften it, it uses the salt to recharge the resin only. About the only
time you'd get salt would be if you happen to draw water while the
system was recharging or if the system was running during the day.

Your system should have a place for you to set it to real time, and it
should pretty much fill the salt tank to make the brine to recharge the
resin. I don't know how difficult it is to change the settings on the
softener, but you might be able to get a manual from a rainsoft dealer.

Good luck!!!