Water softener trouble

Two years ago I bought a 16 year old house with a Culligan N8 Custom installed.

We use a forty pound bag of salt a week normally.

I poured a couple of bags in when leaving town on business so that wife could function and not have to add salt.

Water is no longer being treated...for a couple of weeks the salt is about two feet high, with water about six inches above salt mark.

I tried digging around to see if salt is bridging, I don't believe this is the case.

Any ideas/input?

When the water rises in the salt tank, the control valve isn't sucking out what it is supposed to and then the control valve adds back the water that was supposed to have been used; so the level increases until it overflows the brine tank; unless you have a safety brine valve in the brine tank. The usual causes are blocked injector, injector throat or injector screen. Kinked or restricted drain line. Loose brine line connections allowing air to be sucked instead of heavy brine water. If a loose connection in the brine tank the safety float valve can't stop that type of water leak into the tank. And then there are possible internal control valve problems.

http://www.**************.com/soften.html

Insert plumbing supply without the space for the asterisks in the link.

You are using A TON of salt per year??!!

There is a "salt calculator" at the link above. For 100 gallons per day, and 15 grains per gallon of hardness, it calculates about 150 pounds per year.

I suggest you go to that site, or another of your choosing, and see what you get when you plug in your numbers.

More on Salt Usage

From the web site at the previous post:
"At the factory setting (optimum) it will remove 2,850 grains of hardness per pound of salt."

So if you soften 200 gallons per day, at 10 grains per gallon, 7 days per week,

(200 x 10 x 7)/2850 = 4.9 pounds per week.

That is about 1/8 what you are using. Even if you are not at optimum, there seems to be a problem.

His 40 lbs a week is not unusual and he could be getting more than 2850 grains/lb salt efficiency.

To learn more about correctly sizing a softener.