Water conditioners - What did I do wrong? What should I be doing?

[Matt30]

Ok, time for me to take a lesson from water treatment specialists.

I have worked in thousands of homes with water treatment equipment. I do not service them. I do not know how to service them, it's not part of my job here. I know enough to work around them, or when to tell the customer they need to be serviced.

Early in my career, I recharged a customers pressure tank. I learned the hard way that when you take pressure off the system, you will stir up years worth of sediment in the tank and it can plug the head of the softener if it's not flushed out. So for many years after that, I always made sure to run water off the drain hose of the pressure tank until it's clear before I put it through the system. THEN, a water treatment guy tells me to put the system in bypass first....well ok, now we are sending untreated water to the system, why would we do that if it's running clear?

So last week, recharged a tank and followed my usual procedure of running the line clear before putting it through the conditioner. I put water on, ran water in the tub and everything was clear. Well apparently the next morning the water was super dirty and now the customer is upset, and rightfully so. I went back, and the "dirt" appears to be a green resin I presume is coming from the softener and of course, I'm getting the blame.

So can somebody please tell me, what happened? And what should my procedure be for working around these units? I thought I had a good protocol that worked all these years without issue, then this happened!

 

[speedbump]

I'm have never seen a resin that is green. Gold colored, tan, black and any color in between, but not green.

I have always found that after turning off a pump and allowing the system pressure to go to zero or near zero, all the gunk on the pipes from the bottom of the well to the furthest faucet comes loose. So running the water from a hydrant or outside faucet first is a good idea. Then the tub so it won't be so apt to plug any faucets. Then the cold everywhere with the aerators off. Full blast is the best way to get it all. If there is a softener, by passing it is the best idea. Then no gunk gets into it in the first place.

You draining the system pressure and clearing the lines could in no way that I am aware of cause the softener to pump resin out to the system. There is a screen on the bottom of the distributor tube that takes care of that. Now, without an upper basket (screen) a real hard backwash can and will put resin into the system, but I don't think you caused that to happen either. Besides, if that were possible with this system, it would have happened long ago. I wonder if the green isn't just algae. I see it growing inside of PVC pipes out in the sun all the time. Remove the pressure, and allow it to relax and it will go down stream.

 

[Matt30]

So, the customer has since had her conditioner serviced. The green sandy bits continued for a few days, but she made contact to say things have since cleared. So it appears I didn't mess up the conditioner, and the debris must of been stuff from the pipes.

Thanks for your reply speedbump. Always good to be able to rely on the vast expertise of the forum!