Softener resin

[johnfin]

I cleaned my resin by removing it, washing it in bleach for 1 hour, rinsing it with fresh water then installing it and purging it with fresh water again. The resin was only a year old but full of algae. How will I be able to tell if I runid the resin?

[Gary Slusser]

You can tell by the resin not removing much hardness and needing to be regenerated more frequently. Or inspecting it and finding it to be mushy and in clumps.

Next time add like a 1/4 cup of non scented bleach to 2 gallons of water and pour it down into the salt water in the brine tank and do a manual regeneration instead of soaking the resin in bleach... what were ya thinkin'? lol

[johnfin]

The resin had to come out anyway because the algae was thick and the inside of the tank needed a scrubbing. Its was also mixed in with the resin. Chlorine must not be that bad on resin because alot of people have a single softener system on city(chlorinated) water hence the resin is getting chlorine. Some people I know have used a pool tester and register a 3 (really yellow) with city water.

[Gary Slusser]

You didn't use just 3 ppm of chlorine or you wouldn't have dented the volume of algae you say there was in the resin bed; you used much more than that and then let the resin sit in it for an hour.

And you are here now asking if you should replace your resin because of what and how you did it.... yet now saying chlorine can't be that bad for resin. That depends on the amount of chlorine in the water.

In 20+ years of selling and servicing softeners I've never heard of or seen algae down in the resin, algae needs sunlight to live/grow and although the right color tank allows some light to get trough the tank wall, resin does not allow light through it. BTW, I've dealt with a number of softeners etc. that are installed outside in direct sunlight. Usually only natural non-colored tanks allow a greening on the inside of the tank above the resin in the tank and usually only on the underside of the tank's dome.

[JKERN]

More than likely this is Bio mass not algae formed in your softener and to further add to Gary's comment Blech is 12% hypochlorite and diluted to have a free volume of 2 - 4 ppm in drinking water which is safe for you to consume. This is very different than what you have done.