Water still hard after softener treatment

Your resin may be fouled, especially if you have iron and other minerals other than Calcium and Magnesium in your water in excess. Think of the resin as a plastic ball of steel wool, and there are "exchange sites" on all strands of the wool. These sites have an affinity for Ca and Mg, meaning they want those two ions on the sites. The salt is added and knocks off the Ca and Mg during a regeneration. If the resin is fouled with iron, it will lose softening capacity. Cleaning the resin of iron takes some vinegar and/or citric acid in contact with it for 12-18 hours. If the resin is fouled with suspended solids, you'll have to do an air sparge with surfactant to clean it. If the resin is "old" or exposed to extremely hard water, the exchange sites may be fouled with Ca and Mg. Not sure if you can manually regenerate the resin but a double regen works on fouled resin. You can also do what is called a "brine squeeze" where you turn off the dilution water to the salt and add A LOT of salty water to the resin, then hold it for 24 hours or so, then set it up normally, then go through one more regen before starting in auto again. This frees up the ion exchange sites on the resin by overwhelming the Calcium and Magnesium with the Sodium and making them fall off easier.

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Ray
Husband to a beautiful lady, daddy to 4 sweet girls and two little boys!

You are over using the capacity of your softner or it is not regenerating often enough or both.

Take a treated water sample and have it teated for hardness. If zero then the softner is working. If 2 or more grains of hardness is present then the softner is not working or adjusted properly or it is not regenerating often enough.

Hardness is calcium and magnesium in the water. There are also many other minerals that could be present and leaving a residue but your explaination seem to indicate that the softner is at fault.

your softener isn't working right. Our water is hard enough to grow legs and walk. We have an "iron blanket" that takes out the really nasty stuff. I add a product called Iron Out (Lowe's, Menards etc.) to the softener salt to keep the iron blanket clean. It made all the difference in how well the softener works.

If you shock your well with bleach (without bypassing the softener) you will destroy the resin beads.

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"Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow the fields of those who don't."-Thomas Jefferson

It doesn't matter how "good" the softner is. It need to be sized to meet both your family's water demands and the amount of hardness that needs to be removed. Either your softner was sized incorrectly or it is malfunctioning.

If cared for properly how long will the resin last?

The ionic exchange rosin will last longer than the mechanical parts of a softner unless damaged somehow by harsh chemicals or getting encapsulated with iron. The iron can be removed with Iron Out as previously mentioned.

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Retired after 50 years of plumbing and heating.

I get a container of CLR at Lowes and add it about once a year to the salt tank. I pour 1/3 in with the salt and the rest goes into a reservoir that was used for a proprietary liquid that was basically mineral acid.

I just did it last weekend and the difference is quite noticeable. For $6 it's worth giving a shot.

On the subject of canning when you have hard water. If you run a dehumidifier you can use the water it produces for canning. It will be mineral free. (You've already spent money to get the moisture out of the air. Might as well get some additional benefit from your investment in electricity.)


We have water that is very hard, and also has a lot of iron. I some times think I could pump it with a magnet. We have a basement and run dehumidifiers during the summer and fall. When I had a whole house dehumidifier put in last year I had them install a tap where I could collect the condensate in a bucket (as opposed to draining it to a sump) so we could use it for canning. Works for both water bath and pressure cooker canning. You can easily and inexpensively sanitize the condensate with chlorine bleach if you are uncomfortable about bacteria in the water. However, we have not had a problem since the temps in a pressure cooker should kill most anything we have in the house, and boiling water is a pretty common method for sanitizing also.