Water works

Tuesday last (1/29/13) was a busy day.  First up - a well room project.

The water at the faucets had totally degraded to the point that it was obvious even to me that the water softener was no longer working.

I had the guy come out back in August and all he really had me do is drain the hot water tank because he figured there was iron/calcium buildup and it needed to be flushed.  Did that.  Then he manually regenerated the system - and charged me $85.  Honestly - there was no change in the water quality. 

Fast forward.  This time I got 'the man' in and we truly addressed the problem.  Apparently the  system was skipping regens, so calcium and iron was building on both resin towers.  To that effect he, too, manually regen'd the system.

But the next day when I went to do laundry, both hot and cold water was GREY.  I didn't panic, just figured there was still 'gunk' on the resin so manually regen'd again.  At that time the system switches to using the other tower and it was immediately apparent that THAT tower, too, was still 'gunky'.  But when I went to regen again - no deal.  It wouldn't kick in.   Later on I called 'the man' and he said I'd probably tried to regen while the system was still in 'idle' mode after the last regen.  He told me it takes 30-45 minutes before I could regen again.   So I went down, turned the knob and voila - it regen'd again.

Okay, 3 regens within 24 hours.  And I'd had to once AGAIN drain the hot water tank as it had filled up with the grey water (iron & calcium).  Then, on Friday, 'the man' called me and asked how many regen's so far?  Well, 3 in all.  He said I should do another one so both towers will have had 2 total rinses.  Made sense.  So down I went again and initialized a 4th regen.

Well, I totally refused to flush the hot water tank (40 gals) a third time!  I'll just let the water in there sort itself out.  Fortunately there is enough nice soft water mixing in with the grey so the water is, once again, soft and silky at the faucets.

See, this shouldn't have happened.  The other guy, in August, should have seen this issue and addressed this situation back then instead of the system not working for - wait for it - another 5 months.  I mean, just look at all the well water that went down the drain over these 3 days:  80 gals from the tank, plus 25-30 gallons per regen so nearly 200 gallons.  *sigh*  About the only person that would be happy about this is the sewer guy from last year who said I should be flushing more water down my 200' line to keep sludge plugs from building up.  But, jeeze!

Anyway, 'the man' also replaced 4 filters in my RO system (annual event) and installed a new connector in my main line where it had just started to leak.  Oh, and he just happened to have a flapper that fit my leaky toilet in the main floor bathroom.  (My part?  I bought a new aerator for the sink faucet.)

Bottom line - $137.00 in all (+ $4 for the aerator).   Thankfully I'm not on city water so I'm not paying for anything more than wear and tear on the well pump.  But more than that - I learned a lot, how to detect missed regen cycles, how/why the regen works, etc etc.  So it was a good experience if you wind up with a little less in the wallet in exchange for a lot more in your head!


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