On Nov 11, 9:25 pm, "olddog" wrote:
wrote in message

...

On Nov 11, 1:55 am, wrote:
On Sat, 8 Nov 2008 15:34:41 -0800 (PST), wrote:
Ok, I'm RENTING a house that has hard water and has a water softener.
I had been in the house for a couple of months and realized that the
salt level in the softener never changed. The system IS NOT ON
BYPASS, I made sure of that, I'm getting water flow. When I went to
poke around in the salt, i realized that it is a solid block. It
looks like the pellets in the bag, but they are fused together. So
from about halfway down the tank to the bottom is a solid chunk of
salt. How can I break up/dissolve the salt without removing the
tank??? I am not going to pay a plumber to come out, and the owner of
the house doesn't feel it is worth his time/money. The hard water
bothers my skin, so I would like to find a way to fix this. Any
suggestions???

Whatever method you use to break up the solid salt bridge make sure
that you only use one bag of salt at a time. Keep the salt level as
low as possible to prevent this from happening again.

Hot tap water will dissolve that salt block without any chance of
damaging the brine tank. As the salt melts and separates remove and
discard it. Ultimately you'll end up with a lot of water in the brine
tank and that should be removed.

As stated above, it's a good idea to only put enough salt in the brine
tank to cover the water so there isn't lots of weight on the salt at
the bottom.

I've never heard that but you maybe talking about another system. I just
talked to the serviceman for Rain Soft and he said to fill it up. Mine holds
about 250lbs. But I do get mine serviced each year. He didn't say anything
about cleaning the tank but I'll ask him next time he comes.

Olddog

If you keep the brine tank full of salt that puts a lot of weight on
the wet salt on the bottom. Wet salt + weight = salt bridge and that
is regardless of the brand of water softener.

Keeping enough salt in the brine tank to cover the water and adding as
needed results in fewer salt bridge problems.

If you're paying Rainsoft for yearly service and they are NOT cleaning
your brine tank then what are you getting for your money?

As far as your Rainsoft serviceman... sometimes you can't teach an old
dog new tricks and sometimes you can't teach an old dog any tricks.