Kinetico Water Softener not working

[Artimus B. Millet]

I have a standard twin-tank, no electricity, Kinetico water softener system. This was probably my error, but a couple of months ago, I put in a large amount of potassium chloride pellets, and my problems began soon afterwards.

The water level in the tank often went high enough to flow out of the vent/overflow tube, and the water softener seemed to quit working, as my water is now quite hard.

I cleaned the brine tank and all inner components, put in a bag of coarse salt, and hooked everything back up again, but it still is not working. The water level is just a couple of inches short of the vent/overflow tube, and it just sits there. If I unhook the hose to the tank, there is always flow into the brine tank from the whatchamacallit tanks. Is that right?

(Forgive my ignorance of the proper terminology) the valve inside the vertical tube in the brine tank may or may not be working. Is there some way to tell? I assume this valve controls the flow of water in and out of the tank?

I noted that this valve was all the way up, and after waiting a couple of days for something to happen, I manually pushed it all the way down from it’s full up position, but this seems to have done nothing–my water’s still very hard.

Sure wish I knew how these things worked…

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[GaryPurolite1Participant]

The “valve”, as you call it, we call a “float” must be in the up position. This stops the water flow into the brine tank. It is connected to a valve system in the bottom of the tube in the brine tank that opens when brine is to be drawn. After all the brine is drawn out then that valve system closes by the vacuum created when all the brine is drawn out. At the end of the regeneration cycle the last thing is water pressure goes back to the brine tube to refill the brine tank. As the water is rising it will push the float to the up position until it closes the valve system. It sounds like something in that system has failed. I suggest you have a Kinetico repairman check it or another water conditioning dealer or plumber that will work on that unit check it. It usually is a minimal repair cost.

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