Brine tank overflow...where to drain

[Max]

We have been looking at new water softeners, the type that contain the brine tank as well. They all seem to have overflow pipes from the salt storage tank that need to run to a floor drain because they use gravity. Our current water softener uses an independant brine tank and the brine tank does not have anything that looks like an overflow pipe. There is only one pipe and that goes to the water softener head. Everything sits on concrete and there is no drain in the floor. How can I run an overflow to a floor drain if there is no floor drain? Does it seem fishy that our current brine tank does not have an overflow? I feel foolish for asking this but does it even need an overflow? I'm sure it does otherwise would it be there, right. I don't even know where to start when it comes to installing a drain through a concrete basement foundation.

[mrcaptainbob]

May I ask why you feel a need to replace the whole system?

[Max]

We're not not actually replacing the whole system yet, just looking into possibilities. The reason being that we lose a lot of pressure in the system when the pressure tanks is low but if we bypass the water softener we never lose pressure. To me that indicates a problem somewhere in the softener setup. We never always had this problem. To keep the story short we had a problem with our water and we had a couple of diferent guys come out to look at it. One guy quoted $2600 to replace EVERYTHING inside the house (pressure tank and softener). The second guy that came just cleaned out the nozzles in the softener head unit because the softener had not actually been working for the previous 18 months. After he serviced the softener we had no more problems except losing pressure when, say, someone was in the shower and someone else flushed a toilet. What I did yesterday was dump the old resin and replaced it with new stuff. So far so good. The old resin looks very contaminated with iron which is why I want to put a sediment filter on the inlet. Another (much costlier) option is to just replace all the components with new and hope that everything works perfect after that. I decided to try my hand at plumbing first though.

[mrcaptainbob]

Well! That's great! New resin is a plus, all right! As for losing that pressure, it sonds like the pressure tank's got a diffuglty! Have you checked it for proper pressure? You'll need to shut the pump down and let all the water pressure out. Use a tire gage on the air valve to see what it is. If there's no pressure in that tank, it'll need filling, but most likely it's a broken bladder. You can get a new pressure tank from Home Depot, Menard's, any box store, and put that in yourself. If you did the resin bed, you can do most anything. By the way, that powerhead on the water softener most likely is a rebuildable type. Kit's are usually available and can easily be rebuilt.

[Max]

I seem to be going around in circles. Last night I was watering the lawn for about 4 hours and the water cut out on a couple of of occasions. Whether it's the well pump not switching on or the pressure tank playing up I don't know. Anyway, our water is yellow / orange again. This happened last year when our water cut out as well. I have a water test kit and will see what the quality is like but it's staining our toilet bowl up a treat. The possible problems I think there could be are:
1. the pressure tank is playing up and is fouled with iron.
2. the well is dry and I'm sucking up a lot of sediment. This seems unlikely given the amount of snow that has thawed recently. I guess the well might need to be deeper although I don't know how deep it actually is just now. I called the company whose sticker is on the well pump relay and they couldn't tell me how deep the well was since it was installed so long ago and all the records are filed away somewhere. Nice answer.

I guess I need to test / replace each component piece by piece until I find out where the problem really is.

[Max]

Weird. I used one of those water test kits from Home Depot and our water tests fine for everything but a little on the acidic side. The iron test didn't show any iron in the water yet it is definitely discoloured. I'm going to take a sample to a local water place and have them test it more scientifically to see what the problem is.

[LazyPup]

Installing a sediment filter on the intake line would prevent any sand or solid particulates from getting into the resin chamber, but it would not have any effect on the iron content of the water. The iron is in a liquid suspension in the water so it is too fine to be effected by a sediment filter.

Normally a substantial pressure drop across the water treatment system is indicating it needs to be backflushed. Hopefully changing the resin medium will resolve the majority of that problem.

There really is no necessity to treat the water that is going to the outside hose faucetts so I would consider installing a tap on the input side of the treatment unit to supply the water directly from the pump/pressure tank to the outside hose faucetts. That would substantiall decrease the load on the treatment unit.

In regards to where to drain the treatment unit. The codes require that all water softeners, reverse osmosis or other water treatment unit overflows must be connect to the drain by means of an indirect waste. They may not be directly couple to the waste lines.

To create an indirect waste the discharge end of the line may be run to any suitable sink, floor drain or other waste receptor but the discharge end of the line must remain a minimum of two pipe diameters above the flood level rim of the receptor. Thus, if the discharge line is a 3/4" line the discharge end of the line must be a minimum of 1 1/2" above the floor drain or sink rim to which it discharges.

[Max]

Thanks. I always wondered why our outside faucets were hooked up to the post-softened water. If I bypass the softener then ALL the water is untreated, as opposed to just the outside faucets. Looks like I need to change that too at some point.

Here's a picture of what our water looks like today. It's in a "white" bowl in our sink. The pic is a little blurry because I took it without the flash and no tripod but I think you get the idea. Any idea what could cause this discolouration. We have a lab very close to us but their water test turnaround is 2-3 days, I kinda want / need to know now if it's safe.

[Max]

I've just put in some iron out into the brine tank and started a manual regeneration. I think that will clear up the problem temporarily. What I need to find out is where all the iron is coming from and why our water cuts out. Skillings & Son said they would replace all the interior equipment but that doesn't help me if the problem is with the well pump. I guess this varies by town but do people here know if the town keeps records of how deep a well is? I shall call them, it can't hurt to ask.

[Max]

Here's what our water looks like when I draw some from the spigot right by the pressure tank. I don't know if this is the water before or after it's been in the pressure tank though.

[Max]

Here's the second sample I took, much better:

[Max]

MrCaptainBob ~ I did the test. The pressure measured a platry 32 psi and it should be closer to 38. I have read it should be 2-5psi less than the cut-in but this is 9. I'm going to recharge it today and hopefully the extra 7psi I put in will make a difference. A positive difference I mean.

[mrcaptainbob]

Yeah, that doesn't sound like it would make that much a diff. But that water from the pressure tank! WOWSERS!! Interesting on how much difference there is in the pics. That softener is doing a job, but is being overloaded. Looks like somthings breaking down in the system. It's possible that the pump is degrading, from what you describe as an occasional drop in pressure. That will show a lot of water contamination. So too will degrading pipes from the pump in the well (if that's what you have). I had a 50' well at my last house and the 1" iron pipe was corroded on the inside enough to show up in the water. Also, at another time, the pump (even though it had a lot of stainless 'stuff' in it) became corroded enough to show up in the water, too. I take it that the pressure tank's fairly new, and with a working bladder, there should be no rust from that. The county should have the record of your well, as well as the installer. I sleeved the old 4" cast iron casing with 3" PVC and went with a 3" stainless pump. Still went with the iron pipe, though, as I felt uncomfortable with the black plastic. (One bad experience with that coming off the pump nipple was enough.) But, there was NO more of the heavy rust colored water as what you're experiencing. My guess ($0.02) is it's in the well.

[Max]

It may not have been obvious from my statement above but those two water samples in the white tray were taken from the same faucet by the pressure tank. The second sample wasn't taken after the water softener. It looks like there may have been a collection of sediment in the pipe at that point which was released when I opened the faucet. That's just a guess though.

The pressure tanks, if memory serves, is from around 1990 so it's getting on a bit now.

[mrcaptainbob]

Well, if that bladder still holds air, then age won't matter. I'll tell ya, that sure does bring back some bad memories! Although it had a happy ending, it was a chore getting there.