My Culligan water softener uses 240 pounds of salt every 3 months. The softener is about 10 years old. I set the softener to regenerate 2 times a week. I've also had the softener repaired to correct random regenerations (valve mechanism was faulty and replaced). I am a single person and I don't think I use an unusually large amount of water.
Is this salt consumption normal or excessive?
Thanks much for any input and opinions.
Ken
Ken,
Without knowing how hard your water is and what model number you are using it is difficult to guess how much salt you should be using. But, yes,
80 lbs/mo is excessive. Regenerating twice a week is probably also excessive. I'd be surprised if you need 40 lbs/mo. Talk to your service man. he can tell you how much salt you should use per regeneration and how often you should regenerate.Good luck, Dave M.
I think its broken.
My last softener had a demand setting. I was running it at 17 grains of softness. Recommended was 20 but I did not like the feel of the water then. I changed mine over to manual regeneration, a dip switch. I was regenerating about 2x a month unless I did a lot of laundry. Also living alone. I bought a bag of salt every 6 months or so
Thanks to all for the insights. I suspect I may be regenerating too often. I must say I am also disappointed with the Culligan people--I've had them come out twice to address the concerns about excessive salt consumption and they haven't answered the question satisfactorily yet, only wanted to perform fee-generating repairs.
I set the regeneration to once a week and I'll see how the salt consumption is affected.
The amount of salt used by a water softener depends on a number of things. First is the salt dose based on the compensated hardness, volume of water to be treated and the volume and type of resin used and the TDS and iron content of the water. Also if the control is a time clock model it will historically use more salt on average than a demand regenerated type control valve. The best way to increase salt efficiency is to adjust the salt dose, not how frequently the unit regenerates unless you are already 'short salting'. I find most softeners are undersized resin volume wise and that prevents the option of short salting with the most economical salt dose for the volume and type of resin used.
Gary Quality Water Associates
consumption
regenerations
If you were regenerating twice a week, you'll save 1/2 the salt you were using but... you may not have soft water for the whole week or totally soft water for most of the week. You need a water test for hardness if your water is chlorinated and iron and manganese if you have your own well. Then you need to find the capacity/volume of resin your softener has and then use a formula to find out how frequently your softener should regenerate with different salt doses. The service guy should do this for you free of any other charges because it is basic to setting up a softener and there's nothing else that can be done (right) until he knows those things. You should ask for a refund of the money you've paid them for service calls if they haven't done that. Although he may have done it and won't/didn't tell you the figures. I notice you mention him trying to sell you some fix that you didn't explain. If the resin is worn out it needs to be replaced. Or if there's something wrong with the control valve it should be fixed.
Gary Quality Water Associates
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