Foo - Softened My Water Too Much. How Do I Undo It?

Shortest version possible:

Our water softener was set to a hardness of 35. I switched it to 19 and recharged it that night.

Now we get salt in our water. For example, whenever we boil water, our pots dry and then they are coated in a salty powder that you can wipe off very easily.

I reset the water softener level to 35 and recharged it again overnight, and we have been using water all day long, but we still get the salty powder on everything and my wife insists she tastes salt in the water.

How do I overcome this problem?!

(For those who already think I am crazy, before buying a new dishwasher I wanted to make sure we weren't having hard water issues, so that is why I changed the setting from 35 parts of something-per-something to 19.)

I have never understood this. I was told long ago that hard water is ice and liquid water is soft. I've never seen any liquid water be "harder" or "softer" and the whole concept is alien to me. I hear people talking about their water hardener expenses which I've seen going into the thousands. I use my tap water with no problems, never had an issue with it. IMHO is all in your mind, the result of water softener marketing mind control.

I have never understood this. I was told long ago that hard water is ice and liquid water is soft. I've never seen any liquid water be "harder" or "softer" and the whole concept is alien to me. I hear people talking about their water hardener expenses which I've seen going into the thousands. I use my tap water with no problems, never had an issue with it. IMHO is all in your mind, the result of water softener marketing mind control.

Per Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_water):

Hard water is water that has high mineral content (in contrast with soft water).
Also, Water Softening (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_water).

Sonata - Sorry, no help for you here.

Htfu!

Shortest version possible:

Our water softener was set to a hardness of 35. I switched it to 19 and recharged it that night.

Now we get salt in our water. For example, whenever we boil water, our pots dry and then they are coated in a salty powder that you can wipe off very easily.

I reset the water softener level to 35 and recharged it again overnight, and we have been using water all day long, but we still get the salty powder on everything and my wife insists she tastes salt in the water.

How do I overcome this problem?!

(For those who already think I am crazy, before buying a new dishwasher I wanted to make sure we weren't having hard water issues, so that is why I changed the setting from 35 parts of something-per-something to 19.)


You probably need to read or at least provide what your water softner is (e.g. make/model). It's probably relevant to your problem.

Try tenderizing your water with a hammer. Should soften it up.

If the water is salty, the softener malfunctioned. Best call your service man, as the flush cycle has a problem.

The salt is used to flush the filter media, it should never be going into the drinking water. Sounds like the filter rinse phase is the issue, maybe you accidentally adjusted that?

My water out of the well is 600ppm of TDS, calling it hard is an understatement when bits of shale show up in the bottom of your water glass.

Interesting, because now that I have talked about it, my wife reminded me that we have had a salty taste in our water ever since we started using the softener a few months ago. I thought that was normal! It was already in the house, but unused by the previous owner for who knows how long...

192165
Scale buildup in espresso machine boiler tubing, and scale removed from a brewer. Mmmm.
http://www.gimmecoffee.com/blog/learn_coffee/limescale_buildup_in_espresso/

Try tenderizing your water with a hammer. Should soften it up.

... a water hammer?