The issue, after regeneration I get brown water (almost 15 gallons) before it clears up. The unit is a 35,000 which is used seasonal in our cottage. It does a great job of removing the iron and I can tell by the feel of the water that it is very soft. The unit is almost 4 years old. I am guessing that I am not getting a complete flush during regeneration for whatever reason. It is filled with about 60% salt with an ice bridge on top. I broke up the salt and some water came to the surface of the salt not too much water. I have not taken the salt out to see if there is a bridge at the bottom. I do not think there is a bridge at the bottom because it is doing a great job softening the water. Also I have flushed it with the conditioner recommended by AO Smith. They say this happens if you have high iron. My raw water is 11 hard, 3.0 iron, 7.0 PH, after softner 1 hard, 0.5 iron, 7 PH. So any opinions what might be causing this.
AO Smith softner issue
- Thread starter mrelmo
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CAUSING WHAT?
wpns
Well-Known Member
So clearly after 4 years it's time for some (what probably should have been) annual preventative maintenance (*), how difficult/expensive would it be to clean out the brine tank? Personally I'd start there, though there's a whole giant troubleshooting tree for water softener issues that's probably the easiest thing to start with., and it sounds like it's _working_, it's just got some extra side-effects.
(*) Not pointing fingers, the manufacturers are all like "The Thing lasts forever", but when you have issues are "Why didn't you buy our annual maintenance package?" My iron filter (regenerates with air) did just fine for a few years (5?) and when I started having problems and discovered the annual maintenance tasks (which were easy to do myself, though I'm somewhat handy) was fine till I sold the house.
(*) Not pointing fingers, the manufacturers are all like "The Thing lasts forever", but when you have issues are "Why didn't you buy our annual maintenance package?" My iron filter (regenerates with air) did just fine for a few years (5?) and when I started having problems and discovered the annual maintenance tasks (which were easy to do myself, though I'm somewhat handy) was fine till I sold the house.
This is the first softner we ever used so it was a new process, so the preventative maintenance is something I never heard of, didn't know you can clean out the brine tank. Which I will now research. My quess is that there is a leak in the service valve during regen that it allow a little back flush to get buy however I have not noticed any salt in the water from the faucets (we don't drink the tap water).
