What is this brown residue on the side of my salt tank?

[Clydesdale6]

My water softener and neutralizer were installed a couple of months ago. I went to check on the salt situation and this is what I found. Any idea what this residue is. When i put my hand into the tank and get down to salt, the salt seems clean.

 

[Aaroninnh]

Many water softeners put untreated (non softened) water into the brine tank.

Iron?

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Reach4]

Normally you should have salt above the water. You knew that, right?

How often do you backwash your calcite?

 

[Clydesdale6]

Yes, I know water should be above the water line. I was given the impression that the 4 bags of salt would last 6 months, which I thought was a lot. I will add salt. Thanks.
The calcite neutralizer runs every 3 days.

 

[Reach4]

Yes, I know water should be above the water line. I was given the impression that the 4 bags of salt would last 6 months, which I thought was a lot. I will add salt. Thanks.
The calcite neutralizer runs every 3 days.

I would try to see if the calcite has bed expansion. You can see this if you have a natural-color (unpainted) tank, and shining a bright light through, looking for the shadow. I think 3 days is shorter period than usual for calcite. But the backwash should be vigorous enough to expand the media.

So how is this relevant to your crud in the brine tank? Maybe not at all, but I was thinking that one possiblity is the crud is coming from the well, and the calcite has generated channels big enough to pass the crud. Good backwashing should get rid of channels. Regardless of possible or impossible relation to crud, you want good backwashing maybe once per week. I am not a pro.

More likely the crud is due to impurities in the salt.

Another possibility is that somebody used your brine tank as a waste basket at some point.

I would skim out the crud I could. Then I would add salt so that some salt is always above the water. If you are short of salt, pour the salt to one side so that some salt peeks above the water.

 

[ditttohead]

This is common. Salt is typically listed as 99.9 pure, leaving .1 of "other than salt". This could be bird droppings, dirt, debris etc. Salt is cheap and the cost to transport is sometimes more expensive to ship than the salt itself. Most salt is regionally sourced as much as possible due to the transportation costs. Mined salt tends to be the dirtiest, solar salt tend to be a little dirty too. pellet seems to be a little cleaner, but all salt contains some dirt and debris. Clean and sanitize the brine tank annually. All is good otherwise.

 

[Clydesdale6]

ok, thanks. I added two 40 pound bags of Salt from Costco. Even with these two bags, I checked the water level today and it is still above the salt. I thought the installer stated that the salt would last 6 months. That does not seem to be the case. No big deal. I thought that was a long time. I was adding a bag or so every month with the old softener. By the way, I think I have gotten used to the water. It no longer feels slippery, yet when I check it with my hardness kit, the water still comes up as 1gpg hardness.

 

[Bannerman]

Your salt consumption may be estimated if we know your softener size, current settings, hardness amount and number of users.

 

[Clydesdale6]

I have a 48grain softener with a clack valve with the following settings:
It is currently set to :
Program code p14
ion exchange capacity is 36.0 x1000
Pounds of salt per regen is 13.0

There are 5 people in the house.

Can you tell me approximately how much salt I will use? Thanks a ton.

 

[Bannerman]

Water hardness?

 

[Clydesdale6]

Using the Hach 5 -ep - 1 drop so 1gpg.

 

[Reach4]

Using the Hach 5 -ep - 1 drop so 1gpg.

How about the raw water?

 

[Clydesdale6]

I have a neutralizer. The water is 5gpg at the well and 11gpg after the neutralizer. I will get an iron reading when the materials I ordered arrive. I added the water softener cleaner to the brine well and added citric acid between the two bags of salt that I added this evening.