Are you worried that your water softener has stopped automatically regenerating at night?
The great thing about water softener technology is that it’s typically low maintenance and a lot of that maintenance happens quietly in the background with little to no action from you, the user.
Part of that automatic maintenance is your water softener putting itself through an automatic regeneration, which usually happens at about 2 am when your water usage is at its lowest.
The downside to this is that you’re probably asleep when this happens, so you can’t really hear it or confirm that it has happened. And if you’re experiencing issues with your water, you may start to wonder if it’s going through its proper Regen cycle.
Let’s find out…
Water Softener Regeneration Troubleshooting 101
The good news is this is something you can very easily diagnose and troubleshoot yourself. There is no need to call a professional.
As always, we’ve got a great video that walks you through the whole process, if you would like some visual cues. Click here to watch it.
Whether your water softener is a time clock or a metered water softener, it needs to know when to regenerate the media inside the tank to keep softening your water. But, as we said earlier, the whole idea is to do so when you’re asleep and not using water.
To make sure everything is working, you’re going to start by manually regenerating the water softener right now by pressing and holding down the regeneration cycle (marked Regen) button for 5 or more seconds.
When it starts up, it should go through all 5 or so cycles and end up back in the service or home position, then go back to showing you the current time.
The second thing you can do is to temporarily set the regeneration time to a couple of minutes from now, then put it back into service to see if it regenerates by itself. It’s important to know that your unit doesn’t regenerate every night at 2 am, only on the nights where it needs to. So, we’re going to force an automatic manual Regen for a few minutes from now.
First of all, make sure your current time is correct. Now, we’re going to set a regeneration for 2 minutes from now. Let’s say it’s currently 7:30 pm.
- You’re going to want to press the Next and the Up buttons together. This will display your softener’s hardness level. We don't want to change that, so just press Next.
- The next screen should show you Override 14. Again, we won’t want to change that, so press Next again.
- Now, you’re at the Regen time screen. Set it for 7:32 by pressing the Up and Down arrows to change the hour, then press Next to switch over to the minutes.
- Pay special attention to the AM/PM indicator in the top right. It can be tough to see.
- Press Next again to complete the programming process.
This should bring you back to the Home screen with the current time. You should now see a Regen Today indicator flashing on the left-hand side. That’s important. That means you did everything correctly. If you don’t just click and let go of the regen button and then you will see it.
Now we wait….
If the unit kicks on and goes through the cycle at 7:32, everything is working fine. Be sure to change the Regen time back to 2 am or a time when there is very little water usage in the home.
If it doesn’t kick on, you will now need to troubleshoot your water softener. No problem! We have an excellent video that will walk you through how to do that. Click here for a detailed walkthru.
We are Your Water Softener Experts!
If you are in the market for a new water softener solution for your home or cottage, we’re here to help! We recommend something like our HUM Metered Water Softener System 30,000 Grain Capacity.
Of course, if you have any questions, you can contact us by clicking here.
