Losing my resin out the drain hose.

Ok, another update. I didn't lose any resin during the last regen was because the drain was plugged with resin from the preceding regen. So I go ahead and pull the rubber orifice out of the drain port so the resin there can be rinsed out during a backwash. I manually started a regen. The backwash started fine and the water coming out the drian port was clear for about 15 seconds. However, before I was able to get the orifice back in, a bunch of resin shot out of the drain. I cut the water off to the softener, rinsed the drain port, reinstalled the orifice and drain hose and then turned the water back on to continue the backwash. At this point, no more resin was coming out. The backwash continued without incident.

I now only have approximately 17" of resin in the tank and 24" of headroom. I think I am just going to open the softener, dump whatever is in there, and inspect the distributor tube. I guess I will start looking for some resin. Any suggestions?

Sounds like the distributor tube is good.

With no flow control or rubber orifice you will get the resin flowing out like you did..

With 24 inches of head space you are missing 7-8 inches of resin or about .25 cubic foot of the needed resin for the full capacity of that unit.

Most likely that unit has a full one cubic foot , so getting any thing orther than a full cubic will be a challenge but can be done... or you could remove all that is there save the gravel and put a new bag in the tank with the end of the distributor pluged so that no resin or gravel goes down that tube.

How old is the system? there was no iron or very little?

The system is only 3 years old. How do I tell if there was iron? There is some iron in the water from the well. I also noticed a little of the resin was black.

Iron around here stains orange to red..

Culligan resin if memory is right is black...

3 year old system , the resin should still be good for many a year to come... look to find some one that will sell you a 1/2 cubic so that you have a little extra for later down the road..