Benefits of Knowing Why Your Water Softener is Using Too Much Salt
Water softener systems use salt to ideally get rid of the water’s hardness. It is crucial to monitor and manage salt consumption because it is necessary for softener operation and comes at a cost to the environment and the economy.
When brine systems overflow due to leaking valves or poor controls, highly concentrated and valuable salt water is wasted before the regeneration process has even begun, which is a common cause of excessive salt usage.
Your brine system might pass the outward inspection with flying colors—no evident leaks and cutting-edge controls—but even brand-new softener systems occasionally use twice as much salt as is necessary!
You may start to get worried when you notice your water softener using up more salt than the standard.
But how much salt is considered to be typical?
What influences how much salt your water softener uses?
And can you cut back on the amount of salt you buy each year?
In our guide today, we will be going through these questions to help you out with your water softener’s salt consumption.
Is Your Water Softener Using Too Much Salt?
The majority of water softeners can measure the amount of water used in the house and only regenerate when necessary.
More water will be utilized in the home if there are more occupants, which means the water softener will regenerate more frequently and more salt will be required.
Has one of your children returned from college? Has a new baby entered the home? Is a visitor staying with you? Any of these situations will indicate an increase in the amount of water utilized at home.
What Affects Your Water Softener Using Too Much Salt?
The quantity of salt that your water softener consumes can vary depending on a number of variables. These consist of:
Water Chemistry
The amount of calcium and magnesium in your water can be calculated from its hardness. More sodium will be required for ion exchange in the resin tank since calcium and magnesium ions are present in greater amounts.
It makes sense that, in comparison to a residence with moderately hard water, your system will need more salt per gallon if your hardness levels are especially high. There is nothing you can do to lessen your water’s hardness before it enters the tank because hardness is exactly what you bought your softener to handle.
The amount of salt you use in your water softener may depend on the TDS levels in your water. Total dissolved solids, or TDS, is a general indicator of how saturated with inorganic and organic compounds your water is. If your TDS is higher, your water most likely contains iron, copper, sulfates, or manganese.
During ion exchange, these minerals will also be removed from your water and will occupy space in the resin bed. Because of the added mineral present, your system will still need a significant amount of salt even if your water hardness is relatively low.
Water Consumption
Your daily time spent at home and the size of your family are two important determinants of how much water you consume. Your ion exchange water softener will need to regenerate more regularly if you use more water because there will naturally be more water running through it.
Simply being conscious of water waste could help you reduce the amount of water your home uses. You can lessen your water consumption and the quantity of salt your water softener uses by washing larger batches of clothes less frequently, taking shorter showers, and correcting any leaks.
Resin Capacity
Another crucial aspect that should be taken into account before purchasing the system is the resin capacity of your water softener. The length of time the system can run before the softener needs to renew depends on how much sodium the resin beads can hold onto.
Water softeners are intricate systems, though, and it’s been suggested that the best way to cut costs on this water treatment approach is to regenerate more regularly and with less salt per regeneration.
Wrongly Sized System
There are several sizes of water softeners, and you could believe that the bigger the better is when it comes to producing soft water efficiently. However, if you’re trying to cut back on salt, this isn’t true.
To keep the resin bed active, a water softener has to regenerate every two days. However, if you use less water in your home than your softener can handle, you risk wasting salt in the resin since it can be too big for the amount of water you use on a regular basis.
Leaks
Maybe you’re positive that you utilize a specific volume of water daily in your house. However, it appears that you are utilizing more currently for some reason. You might have a leak in your home’s pipes, toilets, or faucets, or there could be one close to the softening unit.
Up to one gallon of water per day might be lost by even minor leaks. You might put off correcting your leaks, but doing so will cost you money and use more salt in your water softener.
Your water softener will soften a full gallon of water for no apparent reason, for instance, if your leak consumes 1 gallon of water per day. Eliminating this leak will guarantee that you are just utilizing your water softener for intended purposes.
Control Head Reset
The control head may have reset if you recently experienced a power loss in your home and the backup battery for your water softener failed.
Most likely, you entered information about your water’s hardness (measured in GPG or grains per gallon) and your typical daily or weekly water usage when you first installed your water softener. This would have configured the softener to run a regeneration cycle only when necessary.
Your softener might not be performing as effectively if these settings have since been forgotten. When the resin bed contains usable sodium, it might renew, producing salt waste.
Typically, changing the settings on your softener head is not that difficult. If you’re unsure, check your user handbook.
Wrong Programming
In keeping with the aforementioned argument, it’s possible that when you installed the system, you configured your softener head incorrectly. To avoid the softener using too much salt, it’s critical that you measure the hardness of your water and use it accordingly.
As an illustration, suppose you entered 6 GPG for water hardness while the real value was 8 GPG (grains per gallon). The assumption made by your water softener is that it must regenerate quickly enough to restock the salt levels for 8 GPG of hardness.
However, if your water wasn’t so hard, the softener would go through a regeneration cycle before the resin tank’s entire supply of salt was consumed.
I advise purchasing a smart meter and a hardness test kit if you don’t already know your daily water use or hardness level. This removes the element of guesswork from your water treatment, and as a result, you should be able to use less salt in your softener.
Clogged Injector/Venturi
During regeneration, a softener’s injector and venturi draw brine from the water softener’s brine tank and transfer it to the resin tank.
Salt, silt, and sediment can accumulate over time and clog the injector and venturi. This prevents the brine from being drawn out of the brine tank, which may result in the device becoming trapped in a regeneration cycle.
Your salt level could be significantly reduced as a result, as your softening system may end up wasting gallons of brine. Purchasing high-quality, high-purity salt can stop dirt and silt from entering the brine tank, but it’s still a good idea to periodically inspect the injector and venturi for obstructions.
Control Valve Failure
Based on the water flow, your softener’s valve regulates the regeneration of your system. The valve is connected to a timer that is set up using the information that your system has recorded.
If this valve malfunctions, the amount of water that has passed through the device may not be precisely measured. Your water softener’s settings could be incorrect as a result, and the resin tank could have been refilled while still having enough salt in it to produce soft water.
Check For Running Toilets, Leaking Faucets, And Even Outside Spigots
Even though a small drip from a faucet may not seem like a major concern, over the course of a day, that drip might equal several gallons of water, which will cause your water softener to renew more frequently than it did before the leak.
A lot of water might be wasted if you have a faucet that leaks, a toilet that constantly runs, and an outside spigot that just won’t turn completely off. This can cause your water softener to need more salt.
Are You Using A Different Type Of Salt Than You Used Too?
There are numerous types and varieties of salts for water softeners, and they all function slightly differently.
If you go from a brand and kind of water softener salt that generally doesn’t dissolve well because it has a lot of contaminants to one that is highly pure and has fewer impurities, you might notice that more of the pure salt dissolves in your brine tank.
Furthermore, a salt crystal with a bigger size may dissolve more slowly than one with a smaller size.
If your water softener regenerates frequently, the larger-sized piece of salt may not have enough time to dissolve compared to a smaller-sized piece of salt. Given enough time, the amount of salt dissolved would be the same regardless of the size of the salt crystal.
Is The Clock On Your Water Softener Set Correctly?
It may not have enough water pressure to extract all of the brine from the salt tank if your water softener regenerates while water is being used elsewhere in the house.
When this occurs, the water softener will add water to the salt tank. If water has been accidentally left behind, there will be more water than usual in the tank, which will allow for the dissolution of more salt.
When there is no or little water use at home, a water softener should run. As long as the clock is set to the correct time, your water softener should be set to renew at 2:00 am.
Just set the correct time on your water softener, and it should regenerate around 2:00 am when most people are dead asleep. Most water softeners have buttons similar to those on a regular digital clock.
There May Be Water Flowing Through Your Water Softeners’ Control Valve.
In order for the water softener to cycle through its cycles, the majority of water softeners employ a control valve with a piston that travels back and forth to regulate the water flow. This piston passes through a succession of rubber or other water-stopping seals that separate the various chambers where the water must flow for each cycle of regeneration.
These seals may deteriorate with time, allowing water to pass through. When this occurs, the water can continuously flow through the control throughout the day.
A control valve leak of any size might waste many gallons of water per day. The water softener may need to renew more frequently than usual as a result of this lost water, which can quickly accumulate.
Although you can replace this piston and seal by yourself if you are skilled in plumbing-related tasks, I advise consulting a water treatment specialist instead.
Check for these potential causes if you think your water softener is using more salt than it should or much more than it did previously, and you should get it to start utilizing the right quantity of salt.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I spend less money on salt each year?
This manual contains a wealth of advice that should help you increase the effectiveness of your water softener and decrease your salt usage. Purchasing water softener salt in bulk may also enable you to save money.
Manufacturers frequently provide discounts on larger upfront purchases, so for example, buying three bags of salt instead of one might result in lower per-bag costs.
Although you might be able to cut your salt usage, you’ll always need to set aside some money for this maintenance chore because water softeners simply cannot function without salt.