What's up everyone? Welcome back to The Durbin Compound! If you haven't met me already, my name
is Devin Durbin. Today we are going to go over the simple operation of a water softener. So,
this was a video that was requested that I do. We're going to get down and dirt,y a little Barney-style,
on exactly how a water softener works. So any water softener has two basic components. If it is a
sediment water softener, you're going to have your actual water softening unit with your resin
tower. Some designs are different. Some come in a boxed unit. Some come in a big tower. Some are huge.
Some are small. It depends on the manufacturer, on what it actually looks like. So you'll have
your main water softener with your resin tank and then you're going to have your brine tank. So I'll go
over the basic operation of this. Basically, hard water comes into the water softener. This column
here is filled with resin beads. The water goes down through the resin beads and those
resin beads pull out all that sediment inside your water, out of the water. Now it comes back
up as soft water which will have a little bit of salt in it, but not a whole lot.
But it should have all of its sediment removed and it comes out the soft side. So it's basically taking
all those hard sediments and iron and rust and all the things that would be in that aquifer
underneath the ground, taking all that out of the water before it gets to your tap. So a lot
of people, they, you know, they see a water softener in a basement. Maybe they bought a house and they don't
know exactly what is going on with this system. So this is a system that always needs to be kept
full of salt because salt is used for the process of regenerating these resin balls, or the
resin media. So what happens is you should have a brine tank. You should have a tank full
of water. So that tank full of water, you should usually never see the water, but in some designs
you do. What happens is, when this thing regenerates, and wants to wash off those resin beads, it takes
that brine water which is full of salt and it rinses off those beads. So basically, it pumps
water into the brine tank, dissolves all that salt, and then pumps it through the resin beads
and cleans it off. So, these things are very simple operating. They have little, small gears in them. So,
depending on what kind of water softener you have, you might have different kinds of controls. You can
set when this thing regenerates. Mine right now is set at 800 gallons, it will regenerate. So I have
276 gallons remaining before it goes through a regeneration cycle. So
I'm going to bring a camera over. We're going to look inside the brine tank. All right, so this is taking
the cover off the brine tank. We have a container full of salt here. So, you will see if you look on
a regular brine tank, there's only one tube that goes in and out of it. So this one tube puts water
in here, dissolves the salt underneath at the bottom, and then it will pull that salty water
back out, and then it will clean out the resin balls in this tank here. So that's a simple
demonstration of exactly what it does. I have a separate sediment filter afterwards to
catch anything that's gone through. So I think what would be nice to include in this video is
a quick rundown, maybe let's put this on a chalkboard, or something on a whiteboard, so that we can
see exactly, you know, what I'm trying to explain here, make sure everybody's got it. I'm going to
show you a different way of looking at it, but that's basically a rundown--brine tank, water
softener. And that's what it does, regenerates that resin media and renews it so that it cleans again.
And all of that crap water is washed down the drain. Actually, let's go upstairs to
the chalkboard and I'll show you guys what I'm talking about, on paper, or on the wall.
So stay tuned. All right, so midway through the video I realized that have a chalkboard up here. So I can
use this in my office. So I'm finally going back to my roots when I first started on
the channel. So {singing} I'm going back to my roots. All right, so let's start with basic explanation here. This
your well goes down and into an aquifer in the ground. If you don't know it...I hope that's in
frame...I hope it is! Who cares if it's not? But the aquifer is basically a water pocket in the
ground, in the Earth's crust blah blah blah blah. If you want to learn more about that Google it. The
well pump, or the well casing, goes down into the aquifer. And then you have a submersible pump
that's ideally a couple feet off of the ground, in the bottom of the aquifer. So you can just imagine
all that groundwater that's down there is going to be dirty. So depending on where you are, where
your well is drilled, you might have a sulfur-like, an egg smell. Sulfur is treated differently than
what we're talking about right now. Usually the way to treat sulfur is they inject bleach into it and
then clean it out, stuff like that. So getting back to this setup, this is for iron and sediment. So if
you usually just have that rusty type smell or that kind of rusty taste--tastes like pennies
or something like that, then you have iron in your water. If you're getting red staining and
stuff like that. That is what this kind of system will alleviate. So the well, the submersible pump
is down here at the bottom. It goes all the way down with your wires. So if you look in the yard,
you have a, you know, you have the top of your well casing--kind of looks like this. Kind of looks
like a mushroom, right? And then it has a bunch of writing and scribbling and stuff like that. Now what
that does is, literally, just provide a path for your electric to come over. So it looks like
this from the side. Okay, you have your well casing go down here. And then you have your
conduit for your wires. And literally all they're doing is, the wires are coming out here, so they can
go to your house. That's all that head is on that casing. And it's also to be able to inspect
it or whatever. Sometimes people will say, "Hey, you can pour bleach down your well." I don't believe in that.
I think you should just keep it the way it is. Now your water line is going to come out below your
frost line. So depending on where you're at in the country, your frost line is going to be different.
Ours here is about 3 &1/2' or 4'. Your water line is going to come off. So after we
go into the house. Let's...you see the house over here. Ha ha ha. After you go into the house,
let's say this is into your basement, right? Okay. This is a whole house filter. Sometimes you will
have a whole house filter. Sometimes you don't, but what these are designed to do is take out
that sediment, take out those big particles that are in the water, so that you don't clog up
the fine little orifices and stuff like that in your water softener. So your hard water
comes through and goes into your softener. So this is what I couldn't explain in the basement is your
resin beads. Okay, so you have, depending on what manufacturer you have, and the design, these are
all different. So it might be a little box on the floor. It might be a tall tower like mine. But the
concept is all the same. The smaller your unit, the smaller capacity you have with those resin beads.
So you could just imagine how many resin beads you can pack into my tall tower you just saw versus a
little box water softener. Or you might have just a maybe a five-gallon bucket or a three- gallon
bucket worth of beads in there. So all this does is run water through here and out. And all it's doing
is running that water through those resin beads. And those resin beads draw out all those
sediments and all that crap that you don't want in your water, all that iron, all that calcium,
and things that would otherwise be just, you know, clogging up stuff. Clogging up your aerators at
your sink and all those things. So as time goes on, and it depends on the manufacturer on how often
they regenerate, you can regenerate more often, or I think mine is set at 800 gallons. So regenerate 800
gallons, all it is doing is taking this salt... like I said downstairs...there's a little tube that goes into
your brine tank. So some brine tanks are all-inclusive in a unit and some have
a separate brine tank with your salt. It pumps the water over. You get salt water and then it
dissolves that salt at the bottom, and there would be a lot of water in the bottom, and then it sucks
that salt water back out and rinses all of these resin beads. As it rinses all these resin beads, as
its doing that, it will pump all of that stuff, and all that nasty stuff that it rinsed off the resin
beads, it pumps it out into a drain. So you're going to have three main connections, or four main connections,
on your softener, if you have an external brine tank. Your going to have your hard water coming, in your
soft water going out, a drain, and then you're going to have a tube going your brine tank. So just keep in
mind that that brine tank has to be full of water, or has to be full of salt. So if you do not
have salt in your brine tank, you are not properly rinsing these resin beads. So that is why your
water is just getting nasty. So I hope that was a quick, down and dirty video, kind of breaking down
Barney-style for those who don't know anything about water softeners. Just remember, sometimes they
sell a salt that is iron-out salt. That's designed specifically for iron so that you get
that red out or, you know, that's staining in your toilet, all of those things. So keep in mind that
this is a living being in your basement. And if you do own one, you need to keep up with
regular maintenance on it, by adding salt and being cognizant of your water and what it tastes
like. And if there's something going wrong with it, you know, hey say something. So, you know, my wife
will come to me and say, "Hey the water at the sink smells like eggs." Okay, cool. I forgot to
put salt in it. Or I'll go down there--and another thing that can happen here in the brine tank--you
have this brine tank and you have it full of salt. Okay, we'll just say this is all salt. Now as the
water, when the water is pumped down in through here, let's say the tube goods on the side, and
it gets pumped down to the bottom. And what that can do is that can bridge. They call it "salt bridging." So what
that does is it erodes all that salt away. And then it creates a dam where that salt can't fall
down. So all this is all salt. And all this is water. So every time it's regenerating, it's just
regenerating with water. Just as if it was empty, there was no salt in it. So then that's when you
have to take a stick or something and poke this down to break all this salt down to fill this
void. So it's called "salt bridging." So if you physically look at it and you're like, "Well, I
don't see anything wrong with it." you might want to give it a little poke and see if you can't
see if you have a bridging issue going on. But guys I hope you enjoyed the video. I hope it was
not too Barney-style, but I just wanted to get the information out there. I know this is a requested
video. And if you like my content please subscribe. I'd love to see you around the channel. Give me
that thumbs up. And if you've got any questions, hit me in the comments. Just like the Internet, you
know, you put the content out there and everybody tells you what's wrong about it. So hit
me in the comments. We'll have a discussion about it. And as always, we'll see you guys next video.