Water Softener Mystery - Water in tank

Thanks to all who helped on my water softener trials and tribulations -- If my softener lasts 20 years I will be very happy.

It will be a couple of weeks before I am sure if it is fixed. I am on day three and softener has only regenerated the one time I manually called for it (even with the sensor back in place). For some reason when the tank ran out of salt "it" knew to halt the regeneration. As soon as I added salt, the regeneration started again. Not sure how it knows salt is in the tank, but I guess I don't need to know this. Can anyone tell me if the excess water in the tank between generations is a problem? My perception is most components that are exposed to the salt today are plastic, so long term corrosion is not an issue like it was in the days when much more was made out of metal. If not a problem, I'll simply monitor how often it regenerates for a while. Thanks in advance.

A few inches of water in the tank is normal. If you can see the water then you don't have enough salt in the tank. At the time of regeneration the water softener uses the brine solution from the tank, not the dry salt. The water in the tank needs to be completely saturated with salt BEFORE the cycle begins. If not you don't get a complete regeneration or some other malfunction. Modern water softeners have electronic sensors that measure the salinity of the water in the tank and stop regeneration's until you add salt AND the brine is ready. Some can measure the hardness of the water output to determine when the next regeneration cycle is needed which could be several days away depending on your water usage.

Kevin