About 4 - 6 years ago, the screens in the washing machine on the cold water line started plugging up, about once a month. When I back-flushed it a yellowish syrupy, sandy sustance would come out. I would have to flush the washing machine screens in the cold water side about once a month or the cold water would be blocked. About 2 weeks ago the stool and bathroom sink on the first floor became blocked with the same substance. I talked to a couple of people who had had this problem previously and they said it was their water softener causing it. I bypassed my softener for a coupla weeks and everything seemed okay. I talked to a plumber who said he had never heard of that problem but would put in a new softener if I wanted. I had him replace it and now the same type substance, although reddish in color, is still blocking the softened cold water lines. Suggestions have ranged from too high water pressure, to bad internal valve on new softener, to scale in lines, to ????

Any ideas?

Thanks

Gary Bowen
grbowen@frontiernet.net

Once it gets into the pipes it can take a fairly long to before it all flushes out. Put the softener into bypass mode and run all the faucets for a while to see if any more comes out. When the water is clear, turn the softener back on. It would be unusual for the new softener to fail that soon, unless there was a problem with its installation.

In addition to HJ post Remove all of the aerators on each and every faucet, also run the outdoor hydrants first for 5 min,One of the things that you really need to remember is that you need to start and stop the water movement thru the pipes at intervals, this will cause the zeolite that is in the lines to move, If you just constantly run a fixture the zeolite could hit a fitting that will essentially capture it in place until the water stops, then as the water is turned on again the zeolite will break free and start moving again in the system. It will take a lot of time and effort on your part to rid the system of the zeolite in the piping, It can be done and it will test your patience.

Plumbermanda

It sounds like softener resin to me. That can be a serious and expensive problem to solve if you get a lot of it into the plumbing and then fixtures and water using appliances. By-pass the softener. Then the best thing is to backflush the lines. DO NOT try to flush it with your water, that brings it closer to the fixtures and appliances and harder to remove.

Call the plumber that put in the new softener not knowing what the problem with the old one was. There's only two causes of this problem; one is the softener is plumbed backwards or it's too close to a water heater that allows hot water to damage the softener's distributor tube which allows resin out of the softener and into the plumbing. IMO he is responsible for any damage caused by the darker color resin.

Gary
Quality Water Associates

Gary, that reminds me of a problem I had when I first moved to this area. A customer had a commerical A O Smith water heate installed and shortly afterwards it started acting erratically. It appeared that the thermostat was reacting slowly to the water temperature changes, not turning on soon enough and keeping the burner on too long after the water was heated. They sent me out to replace the thermostat. I hooked a hose to the drain valve and began to drain the heater. It had been draining for about 5 minutes when I went outside where the hose was on the driveway. As soon as I saw the water draining, I told the customer that he did not have a problem with the water heater, he had a water softener problem because the driveway was "flooded" with Zeolite mineral. He had a monthly exchange unit and it had just been replaced so it was either defective to begin with, or the heater was close enough to back feed hot water and melt the distribution tubes. He owned one of our larger banks so he had the resources to go after the softener company to be reimbursed for the cost of flushing the heater and system.

I've checked the plumbing. All I have for a plumbing diagram is the booklet. It shows the unsoftened water coming into the left (looking from the front of the unit), being conditioned and the conditioned water leaving from the right. If this is true it is plumbed backwards. I'll get hold of my plumber. Let you guys know.

Gary

If that is actually the way it is piped, then you may have lost a lot of resin from the tank.

It was probably connected backwards which is easy if the plumbing is odne in a way to allow that. They usually have flexible lines and they are plumbed staggered to prevent that.

I see the OP says his softener is plumbed backwards; an honest mistake since a few brands of control valves have their inlet on the left which is different than most. Over the years I've started to plumb a few backwards but always caught myself before finishing the plumbing or leaving. I've found a much larger number that others have done backwards and left. One was backwards for over two years and three different guys had been out to see why it wasn't working right! No resin got out because there was a UV light after it and the flow control didn't allow the loss of resin to get to fixtures because the same plumber installed it with the inlet on top instead of the bottom where it should have been and the light was 3' higher than the softener.

Gary
Quality Water Associates

Have the lines straightened up. My plumber was sure flabbergasted when I told him the trouble.

As far as I can tell (old unit is gone), my old softener was plumbed backwards also (it too had inlet on right and outlet on left as you look at it from the front). It was like that for over 6 years. The only indication I had was the washing machine cold water line getting blocked about once a month. Water was softened after every treatment cycle. Seemed to work good.

Thanks Guys. Hope this fixes me up once and for all. May have to clean screens for a litle bit, but don't think I lost much resin since it's only been installed for about a week.