have a water softening system that was professionally installed in 2007. It replaced a 15 year old system in my house that i purchased in 2001. i’ve never cleaned the brine tank (never had any issues) until this year. Got my brine tank almost empty and was surprised to discover that there is no grid at the bottom. Instead, there were some white rocks (maybe one inch in size) and dirt/mud. my guess is that the rocks were used in lieu of the grid, but there weren’t very many; maybe a few handfuls. Not enough to form a type of filter, at least. i’m replacing the tank with a new one (easier than trying to clean it), including a grid. Just curious if anyone knows why rocks would have been used at the base if a brine tank. thanks
I have never seen a grid or rocks in the bottom of a brine tank. There is no need for one if you are using salt that is specific for a water softener. You really need to clean the crap out of the bottom of the tank at twice a year. Some salt is much dirtier than others.
thanks for the response i think the company that installed the system put the pumice-like stones around the base of the brine well in my brine tank. In searching online, I only saw plastic grids fir the bottom if the brine tank, hence the question. Just put in a new brine tank and brine well with the proper plastic grid at the bottom. Old one was pretty bad - alot of dirt; surprised it hadn’t failed. Regenerated the system a bunch of times and ran water softener cleaner through it. Seems much better. Will be maintaining it more diligently from now on now that I know about it.
Softener for our place is a Solid Bottom Brine tank, uses just enough water to soak the pellets or loose salt(Prefer pellets), where our old house had a singular tank/softener housing, did not hold much salt and was always due for reloads. It worked OK, new one seems fine where we will on occasion get the grey residual around the toilet bowl(Dirt).
The resin in water softeners can/will slowly deteriorate from age and chlorine in the water. A sure sign is a lowered flow of water volume and an extreme failure, the water will have a faint smell and taste of dirt.
Ours be on a Deep Well!!
my well is about 250’ down I did alot of internet “research” in figuring out what is the proper way to set this up. saw many youtube videos by water softener companies. They basically all say to have a brine solution at the bottom of the brine tank so that the brine well has a good solution to suck up, hence the plastic platform to keep the actual salt crystals about three inches off the bottom. Will be interesting to see what the bottom looks like is about six months. I was getting rusting/browning in the toilet bowls due to its dirty condition. I backwashed the softener beads probably five times, including a few with cleaning solutions.
We do not have any iron but do have sulphur so softener is a necessity for odor and taste as well Hardness in Lime rock based aquifer.