Hard water is back, the salt is not moving, or the unit runs constantly. Most of the time that is a repair, not a replacement.
Salt hardens into a crust that spans the tank, so the water underneath never touches it and no brine is made. The unit keeps running its cycle and softens nothing. This is the most common cause and the least serious.
The valve is what tells the system when and how to regenerate. When it fails the system either stops regenerating or regenerates constantly, wasting salt and water.
Resin is the media that actually does the softening, and it wears out. Iron and chlorine both shorten its life considerably, which is why a home on well water with untreated iron tends to go through resin faster than it should.
If the unit is old, undersized for the house, or has been fighting iron and sulfur it was never built to handle, repairing it puts money into a system that will keep failing. The honest way to settle it is to test the water and look at the unit, then compare the repair against a system actually sized to your water. SolarPure does both in the same free visit.
A softener that failed early was often the wrong size or the wrong configuration from the start. See water softener installation for what decides the sizing.
The most common cause is a salt bridge, a hardened crust of salt spanning the brine tank so no brine is actually made. After that it is usually the control valve or a spent resin bed. All three are diagnosable in one visit.
It depends on the age of the unit and whether it was correctly sized for your water in the first place. A unit that has been fighting untreated iron or sulfur will keep failing, and repairing it repeatedly costs more than replacing it once.
A properly sized system on suitable water lasts many years. Units that fail early were usually undersized, or were asked to handle iron and sulfur that should have been filtered ahead of them.
Yes. Request a free water test and the visit covers both the condition of the existing unit and what your water actually needs.
Get a free in-home water test and a system sized to your home. No cost, no obligation.
Request Your Free Water Test or call 877-709-7873