Hard water on it’s own can be a challenge to deal with but when a town with water issues decide on extreme measures, things can get ugly fast.
The typical treatment for hard water is the salt ion exchange system. Having one already, it was an easy choice when to use it when we moved in. It soon became apparent that one was not quite enough so eventually a second was added in series. Hardness, however, isn’t the only issue here. High levels of ammonia in the water are also present and because ammonia breaks down chlorine, more is used. When this is done correctly, the resulting chlorine levels at the tap are adequate although the water ends up discolored like as if it has high iron content.
If things remained in balance, all would have been manageable. Life isn’t like that. Whether it was incompetence, lack of training, or over reaction to something in the water the town cranked up the chlorine levels for a good month. The smell was like bleach every time the water was used and it just didn’t go away for a long time. When levels finally got back to reasonable, the water was hard all the time.
Residue from chlorine and ammonia is slimy and coats resin beads making them ineffective. This we were already used to. Regularly adding cleaning agents to restore the resin was the norm. It wasn’t having any effect now. After regeneration twice with no improvement, the test strips came out to verify. Incoming water vs softened showed almost no difference. That’s when the alarm bells sounded.
Chlorine doesn’t just react with ammonia. It also works to destroy softener resin beads. Somehow during the high bleach days, I completely forgot about that. This was the real cause for the slow downs and reduced softness. Chlorine was destroying the resin at an alarming rate and now we are left with two large paper weights, courtesy of the town’s overuse of chlorine.
The dilemma now is whether to replace the resin myself for over $500 or look at alternatives. Although a dechlorinator could be added in front of the repaired softeners that would easily add $2000 or more to the price of this repair. This may be where cheaper salt free alternative is in order and if so, the update may appear here later.