Q&A for How to Maintain Your Water Softening System

There will be a button or knob on the control panel that will allow you to switch the system to automatic. You many need to input a schedule for the machine to operate by; consult your manual for that.

There is sulfur in your water. Water softener is not meant to, nor able to get rid of sulfur. Almost all well water in the US contains sulfur. There are no detrimental health effects from sulfur in your drinking water, but it can be unpleasant to taste and smell. The only way to get rid of it is a more comprehensive purification system.

It depends on water hardness and usage. I can go through that much salt in the summer when I'm watering the grass and topping the pool.

You can get the manual from the manufacturer, or off the internet. There are tons of manuals available on the internet.

This can vary. Check the website of the manufacturer of your water softener; most have manuals for your specific model online.

Softener manufacturers supply a bypass valve. Push the valve to the bypass position, then turn off power to the water softener. To locate the bypass valve, look for two pipes that are connected to the water softener. One can be traced to the inlet and the other would be softened water flowing to the rest of the house.

Yes. Technically everything in a water line reduces pressure, even the pipe! (The farther away from the source, the lower the pressure will be.) However, to compensate for the pressure drop, fixtures typically have inlet and outlet diameters than the supply line, to minimize the pressure needed to function properly. Our water softener's intake once clogged with sand when our well had a "collapse event", which reduced pressure dramatically. Conceivably, yours could even be clogged with hard-water deposits. Research how to take it apart and check.

A choice is made to soften all the water in the house, or only the water to the hot water heater, leaving the cold water line hard/unsoftened. Hard water deposits tend to show up quicker in hot water connections, and a water heater, an expensive item, will fail from sooner from buildup. If only hot water is softened, try making coffee using hot tap water only, drawing it even before it's hot. Some can taste the difference between softened and unsoftened water and in fact, thus choose to leave cold/drinking water untreated, using it for houseplants and such.

Not in a normal water softener, although there is a control valve that could need cleaning. This would usually be done with a normal cleaning solution.

Only put in a gallon or two. It will siphon water to adjust on its own. Just don’t run regenerator for at least a day.