How Do Water Softeners Operate?

Video transcription

The basic operation of a water softening system starts with the water coming into the house. This is this pipe here. The water comes into the house, runs through this bypass valve, which is a shut off valve to make the hard water just completely go away if you ever have to service a system. But it comes into a valve on the back side of this that also runs in through this mechanical head. There is a bunch of little o-rings that move back and forth inside of there to let water into the resin, and out of the resin to soften your water system. The operation of that comes back to positively charged molecules coming in such as magnesium and calcium. And the negatively charged beads in here, the polystyrene beads also known as resin. The water comes and passes over. What happens is an electric process as the water comes across with the positive charge the negatively charged ones they are attracted, because opposites attract, and it pulls off those minerals out of the water itself. So then it comes into your home, and it is called soft water at that point. That is just the basic operation of what it is. Now there is the components in this system are the salt brain tank, which is either a separate tank like this. Or there is a cabinet type that has this tank inside of this tank, and it has a little computer head on top of it. And it is a little box looking situation there that is about a little bit taller than this tank itself. What happens is the water comes in and fills into this tank that is full of salt. This is just a basically all it does is hold salt, and it makes a mixture that they call brine with the salt water is brine. It pulls this off in the regeneration process, and puts it into the resin. So basically what you have is a high concentrate mixture of salt water that comes into the resin itself, and it knocks all, it is also positively charged, and it is stronger than the calcium and magnesium, and it knocks all that off of the resin, negatively charged resin beads, and flushes it out the system with a couple of different flushes when it regenerates. And then that is basically the loop, and it goes back into the service. And then once again it is producing soft water. The whole time it is doing this process it will still produce soft water, but not as much. Typically when a guy sets this up to regenerate they will set it for a later time in the day when they know they are not using water as much like five o'clock in the morning or midnight at those time frames. Also it has to do with your sleep pattern, and if it is next to your bedroom or not. But that is the basic operation of the water softener.