Hi. My wife & I just bought a house a couple months ago, in which the
previous owner had installed a water softener. I assume its working
correctly -- as the dishes don't have spots and at first the water
felt a bit "slimy." But, then we figured that's just because we were
used to hard water all these years. Now, we like feel of the water.

The gentleman before us lived by himself. He had the setting as
follows:

Hardness: 25. (Available range is 1-150, default is 20)

Regen day: 14 (Available is range is 1-28 days)
The manual says this is the MAXIMUM number of days between
regenerations. So, I assume it could do it sooner than every 14 days,
if it detected it was necessary? Is this correct? He had it at 14
days for himself, so maybe I should move it to 7 days since there are
two of us?

Regen time: 2am ... although I could have sworn I saw it doing the
regen one time in the afternoon. So, I guess this goes back to my
previous question ... will it regen automatically if it feels its
necessary to do BEFORE the setting you have programmed in?

I have left the setting as he had them and everything "seems" ok, but
I'm wondering if maybe I should adjust something for our situation?
Also, I noticed the other day that the salt tank was finally getting
low (to where I could see water on the bottom), So, I just dumped in a
bag of salt that he had left behind for the tank. Was this ok to do or
should I have done it during regeneration?

Finally, is there any additional maintenance I should be doing with
this thing? The manual (which stinks) mentions something about
sanitizing with bleach and allow the system to complete the
regeneration cycle. What about cleaning the salt tank itself?

Sorry for all the questions, but the manual that came with this is
horrible and this is my first experience with a water softener. Thank
you!

-Jim