Sears water softener problem

[Lee]

I have a Sears Sears Model # 625.3484500 water softener, about 12 years old.

I don't keep more than a about 1.5 bags of salt in it, an sometimes when I look (between cycles) in I see there is about 8" of water around the salt. Much more than normal. Normally I can never see the water, as the salt covers the few inches that is normal.

This is intermittent. Happens maybe once every couple months. If I recycle the softener the problem corrects itself and water level returns to normal. I've checked the venturi screen and orrifice and the little screen at the end of the brine tube, as that failed a few years back. It still looks new.

Since it doesn't always have this problem, I'm not sure how to troubleshoot it further. Ideas?

[Paul Franklin]

I recently had to diagnose mine (different symptom; had an error code displayed) It's about the same vintage as yours. The manual has a procedure for manually moving through each step in the cycle, with a description of what should be happening at each step I ended not needing to do it, because it was the timer motor that had failed, but following the procedure might help you diagnose the problem.

If you don't have the manual, you might be able to acess online at sears.com/parts. I'd start by going through the troubleshooting procedure.. Since it doesn't happen every time, it may be tricky to track down.

HTH,

Paul

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I'm not familiar with that particular model, but have had brine tanks of other softeners. There probably is a float valve that opens when the brine is sucked out to let water in to re-fill it. Just as a sink faucet may drip, the float valve may get some gunk caught in it, or the seal is going bad and will not close fully.