On Tue, 5 Dec 2006 22:57:56 -0800, Lee wrote:

I have a Sears Sears Model # 625.3484500 water softener, about 12 years
old.

I don't keep more than a about 1.5 bags of salt in it, an sometimes when I
look (between cycles) in I see there is about 8" of water around the salt.
Much more than normal. Normally I can never see the water, as the salt
covers the few inches that is normal.

This is intermittent. Happens maybe once every couple months. If I recycle
the softener the problem corrects itself and water level returns to normal.
I've checked the venturi screen and orrifice and the little screen at the
end of the brine tube, as that failed a few years back. It still looks new.

Since it doesn't always have this problem, I'm not sure how to troubleshoot
it further. Ideas?

I recently had to diagnose mine (different symptom; had an error code
displayed) It's about the same vintage as yours. The manual has a
procedure for manually moving through each step in the cycle, with a
description of what should be happening at each step I ended not
needing to do it, because it was the timer motor that had failed, but
following the procedure might help you diagnose the problem.

If you don't have the manual, you might be able to acess online at
sears.com/parts. I'd start by going through the troubleshooting
procedure.. Since it doesn't happen every time, it may be tricky to
track down.

HTH,

Paul