Water Pressure w/ Softener

[Matt Fuerst]

Greetings all,

I appreciate any ideas/pointers people can share with me..

I am on a well and have a water softener. My softener had not had salt in it for many months as the "hard" water doesn't bother me. I am having a guest come that is more sensitive than I so I went out this past Saturday and bought 3 X 40 lb bags of salt and Saturday evening before bed I filled up the softener.

Sunday morning I woke and there was nearly 0 pressure in all my indoor water faucets. There was enough to get the shower head dripping but that was about it.... I resigned myself to a crummy shower and hopped in. About 3 minutes in, I heard my well pump snap on, and BAM, pressure was restored. Yippie. Transient anomoly I said to myself. The rest of the day - water pressure was fine (though I was gone for most all of the day).

Monday morning, I wake up, same problem. No pressure. I curse softly, then turn the shower on and let it run for a few minutes while I surf the web, figuring as soon as my well pump turns on my problems will be magically solved again.. this time - no luck. The pump turns on but I don't get any pressure still. Crummy shower.

So that's where I am at. A little googling shows there is generally a "bypass valve" on softeners - a valve between the incoming and outgoing water pipes but I don't see one on my system. I suspect that in the many months of sitting stagnant some junk has built up in the output of my softener.. does that sound like a possible culprit? I suspect that for months with it empty I was getting water straight from my well and bypassing the softener. But then again in both circumstances I would imagine my hot water is coming from the hot water tank so I can't imagine how the softener being "junked up" would really play a role. Maybe the softener thing is a red herring and there is a problem "earlier" in the plumbing system - IE the well and pump, etc...

I am painfully "unhandy" around the house, so pretty much my question (aside from anything super easy and obvious) would be a recommendation of who to call - a plumber? A water softener company?

Thanks so much for any help! Here's to a life with good showers...

Matt

[David Martel]

Matt,

Do you have a bypass valve? Did you bypass the softener when you were not using it? Is your cold water soft now? Can you bypass the softener now? If you are unhandy I think you should buy several gallons of water from the supermarket and call a plumber.

Dave M.

[gfretwell]

Did the recharge cycle complete? I am guessing it runs at 2AM each night but the clock may not be set. You may have a sticking valve in the softener from not running all that time. Those are the little metal doodads the cam operates

[Matt Fuerst]

An awesome question, which I should have mentioned in the original posting.. as of this morning the Softener read "3" (since it has a single digit LCD) which I believe means 3 am.. it was making what I would call a "hissing" sound and doing something.. so I guess it may well hve been in process... Sorry for the ignorance on my part... I forwarded the time to 8... I guess I will know more when I get home from work today and see the status of my water pressure...

Matt

[PipeDown]

You have made a lot of assumptions, have you even looked at the manual. 3 sounds more like an operating code or an error code. Nobody in their right mind would make a product with a one digit clock (Duh)

[Robert Gammon]

BTW, you need to run a manual regen FIRST time out with salt in to prime the resin. Timers are periodic (every few days) or demand driven (so many gallons flow thru for a given hardness).

The bypass valve is generally a horizontal plunger that connects the inlet and outlet pipes on the back of the control head. It has arrows on it to indicate which direction is In and Out.

[rogersdawn2]

call a well service company they can install and service tanks and conditioners as well as the well. most plumbers dont work on wells or conditioners. scott

[jah213]

Call a water softener company. When I moved in my softener did not work (similar scenario -- hadn't been used in a long time). I had a plumber here doing some plumbing repair and asked him about it, and he specifically told me to call the softener guy for this. I guess technically it's not plumbing.

Jo Ann PS: In my case, turned out timer was broken and had to be replaced.