In my last column, I began to write about water conditioning and focused on the most typical condition — at least in my area — that needs to be dealt with. That condition is hardness, mainly caused by calcium dissolved into the groundwater. A water softener will remove this calcium and other hardness minerals. As I wrote in that column, this month’s topic is reconditioning softener mineral, or regeneration as it is commonly referred as.
A typical residential water softener consists of two tanks, or a tank and a tub. The first tank contains the mineral, and nowadays, is almost always made of Fiberglas, as it is under system pressure. The second tank or tub contains saltwater and either dry salt in a block form or, more often, in pellet form. You can see bags of this water softener salt in grocery stores, hardware stores, big box stores and even lumber yards. As I wrote last time, water softener mineral has the almost magic ability to exchange hard ions, especially calcium, for soft ions — the most common being sodium. Sodium, of course, is part of sodium chloride or salt.