Anyone have any suggestions on how to eliminate an odor originating from a water softener?
The odor is noticeable, but not offensive, like a sulphur smell.
The softener sat unused (but sealed off with the bypass valve) for 4 years after being used for one year. Could that have something to do with it?
There are important considerations to keep in mind when building a slab-on-grade home with continuous insulation.
"I have learned so much thanks to the searchable articles on the FHB website. I can confidently say that I expect to be a life-long subscriber." - M.K.
Dig into cutting-edge approaches and decades of proven solutions with total access to our experts and tradespeople.
Start Free Trial NowGet instant access to the latest developments in green building, research, and reports from the field.
Start Free Trial Now
Replies
Try tossing a few ounces (3-4) of laundry bleach...... mixed in about three gallons of water into the brine tank......and then force regeneration.
When it finishes this regeneration cycle...... make sure the machine replenished the brine water in the salt tank as it should have ........wait a few hours for the salt to dissolve...........and then force another regeneration without adding anything more, other than having the salt in the brine tank.
Each regeneration cycle will likely take around 45 minutes, start to finish.
Can't help but wonder why someone would install a softener and then throw the bypass unless they were simply too cheap/poor/lazy to buy the salt or too disabled to resupply the brine tank......... or there is some other problem involved; like a malfunctioning softener, high iron content or similar in water supply that slugged the media, etc. On that note, is this city water supply or well water?
Was/is it set properly to the hardness of the water involved and to the recommended level of salt required to regenerate at that hardness level?
Simple day clock or water-consumption metered head?
On the "malfunctioning softener" possibility.........is this machine maybe plugged into a switched outlet that only has power when the basement light switch is on? We've seen the "my softener doesn't work right" deal many times only to find it's plugged into a switched outlet. Dehumdifiers, too.
Knowledge is power, but only if applied in a timely fashion.
Edited 10/20/2005 10:55 pm ET by goldhiller
It was my softener. The city went from well water to lake water, so the softener was no longer needed.
I pushed the bypass valve because the softener was not needed anymore.
A friend in a different area needed a softener, so I sold mine, thinking it would be OK because it had not been used. Now it has an odor, so I am trying to fix the problem.
It is a computerized model with the metered head. The hardness has been set properly.
It is plugged into an unswitched outlet.
Well that explains it. No real problems with the machine at all, except it sounds like it needs a little sanitizing and deodorizing. There's an older fella around here for whom we installed a water softener about 5 or 6 years ago because his wife wouldn't stop badgering him about getting one. He, needless to say, didn't see the need for it, didn't want to spend the coin, nor go thru the hassle of toting salt to the thing. But he got weary of the pain in his ear and had us install one. His wife was so pleased.Then.........he started slowly adjusting the setting of how much salt it used at regeneration, so that over a period of 8 months or so...had it using nearly no salt per cycle. That's when he threw the bypass. Told us all about it when we ran into him cause he was so proud that he'd managed to re-train his wife to hard water. Takes all kinds, I guess. <G> (Well acutally, it doesn't. But they're here nonetheless.)Can't tell ya how many homes we've been in over the years only to find that the HO wasn't feeding salt to the beast at all. Not a priority to 'em, so it didn't get done. Eventually the media slugs, chokes down the flow rate thru the machine, water flow suffers downstream in the house and we get a call.Knowledge is power, but only if applied in a timely fashion.
I'm guessing that the water in the resin tank got pretty ripe sitting there for several years. Hopefully the resin itself has not broken down. Also, of course, the salt tank would have had some water sitting in it for much of that time and gotten ripe as well.
Both will need to be flushed/cleaned. The salt tank should be completely emptied of all salt and silt (may require removing the bottom grille) and then washed with detergent and a touch of bleach. Use a siphon to empty the tank, if you can't easily tip it over. Not sure about the resin bed -- probably flush with clear water (keep pressing the manual recycle button every time you walk by for 2-3 days) and then run a resin bed cleaner through.
No electrons were harmed in the making of this post.
Where can I find resin bed cleaner?
Sears probably carries it.--------------
No electrons were harmed in the making of this post.