Your water softener is one of the hardest working pieces of equipment in your home. The job of a water softener is to remove iron, calcium, magnesium, manganese, gross alpha and lead.

So, what happens when you let your water softener run out of salt? What happens when you let your car run out of gas? It simply just doesn’t work.

    A water softener works by ion exchange (sodium or potassium are exchanged for the minerals).  Salt helps to clean the resin beads inside the fiberglass tank.  No salt, means no cleaning can be done.  You may start to see iron staining in your sinks, toilets and tubs.  You also may start to notice a change in how the water feels on your skin (soap isn’t sudsy). What you can’t see is the minerals starting to build up in your pipes, hot water heater and appliances.

  What can you do? Maintain the levels in your salt tank to at least half, do not fill over top of the brine well (tube inside the salt tank). If you notice that you have run out of salt fill as soon as possible you can put the unit into a regeneration (see owners manual). If poor quality water persists call your local water treatment experts.