Morton water softener

**ankunte** · 08-06-2012, 07:34 AM

Greetings Gurus,

I bought Morton Water Softener MSD30D less than a year ago. I worked fine for few months consuming about one 40 lb bag of salt every month. Our city water has hardness of 11 and .02 iron. I did not check hardness of soft water then but in shower could feel that water is soft. After 3-4 months I could feel that softener is not producing soft water. Called Morton. they asked me to check flow counter on display by opening faucet and it works fine. Ran Iron out twice. Poured gallon of warm water in brine well and regenerated twice. None of that helped. From the manual, followed instructions to follow regeneration steps. They worked fine and see suction from brine tube, discharge of water when required. Skipped backwash cycle or rinse after brine just to make sure that brine is entering tank and water was very salty. Flashed light on talk and visually checked the water entering during backwash. Then ran regeneration manually giving close to 1 hour for each step and still water is hard. Morton said that if all the components are working fine, they can not do anything more to help.

So every step appears to work fine except for soft water.What is missing? Appreciate any help or advise

**mialynette2003** · 08-06-2012, 09:37 AM

Each step should not take 1 hour. Sounds to me the seal between the valve body and the distributor could be at fault. To check, place unit on bypass and relieve pressure. Pull bypass toward the valve and remove clips. Remove clip holding valve to tank. Remove valve. You should see oring around distributor which sticks up 1" above inside of upper basket.

**ankunte** · 08-06-2012, 09:59 AM

Sorry for the confusion. I manually ran each step for 1 hr just to make sure that resin is thoroughly washed/regenerated.

**ankunte** · 08-06-2012, 08:37 PM

Originally Posted by mialynette2003

Each step should not take 1 hour. Sounds to me the seal between the valve body and the distributor could be at fault. To check, place unit on bypass and relieve pressure. Pull bypass toward the valve and remove clips. Remove clip holding valve to tank. Remove valve. You should see oring around distributor which sticks up 1" above inside of upper basket.

Thanks for your help. Removed valve and checked o-ring. Looks OK. Reseated o-rings and reinstalled valve. Still the same problem...no soft water. Per Morton it is very unlikely that resin has gone bad in such a short time.

**bcpumpguy** · 08-06-2012, 11:46 PM

very unlikely, but possible. besides Iron and Hardness what else is in the water, how much chlorine is there?

**knowhow** · 08-07-2012, 04:14 AM

You may want to get the Hach Hardness Test Kit http://www.hach.com/total-hardness-test-kit-model-5-b/product?id=7640219508&callback=bc
to test the water after the softener.

Is there a possibility that the softener you purchased is undersized? If so you may have exceeded the resin's capacity and are getting hardness breaking through. I have read that you would need to regenerate using a salt dose of 15lb per cu ft of resin. Here is a thread from this site http://www.terrylove.com/forums/showthread.php?44332-Recommended-best-settings-for-6700xtr-48-000-grain-water-softener

There may also be the possibility that the chlorine in your city water has damaged the resin. I would not think this would be the case since you stated that your unit is less than one year old. Have you tested the pretreated and post-treated water for chlorine?

Other possibilities are channeling, a broken distributor basket, etc..

You may also want to read the info at this site (I have no affiliation) http://www.aquatechnology.net/conditionerswork.html

Hope you are able to resolve the problem.