Whole House Water Filter Problem

[stubbsz]

Hi

My whole house has its water filtered. There is the main unit (a big silver cylinder with the timing mechanisms and whatnot on the top) and a wider cylinder that holds salt tablets. Recently, the salt level has stopped going down and the salt is starting to smell.

Couple of questions:

What could be happening?
Who in San Jose, could service this thing at a reasonable rate? (the people who install it no longet exist apparently).
Anything that I could do?

Thanks

-Adrian

Kinda off topic but I feel as fellow reefers, water filtration may be something a few of you might know about.

 

[jedininja]

Sounds like a water softening unit? You should be able to remove the cylinder that holds the tablets, wash it out and replace it with new colar salt.

 

[stubbsz]

Thanks. I Might try that... however, it doesn't really help me understand what is actually happening here.

The unit does look like this :
http://cgi.ebay.com/64k-Complete-Wa...6051762593QQcategoryZ3191QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Colar Salt?

 

[jedininja]

Oops, meant solar salt. Water softeners use this salt to filter the water. I dont know the exact process. But the salt gets used up and a lot of nasty gunk is left behind. I used to have a similar unit and washed out the salt container everytime I needed to add more salt.

 

[stubbsz]

I did as you suggested. There was some seriously nasty gunk in there. I've cleaned it out and run a manual cycle... water is getting pushed in and pulled out of brine container so assuming the timer is working (which is a big assumption... I can't figure out when it runs apart from the time...) I'm back in business. Will definitely not have as much salt in the container going forward so I can monitor better.

-Adrian

 

[Vincerama2]

http://home.howstuffworks.com/question99.htm

How water softeners work...

V