After you've had your water softener for a few years you may notice some dark stains near the water line in the brine (salt) tank. Yup, you guessed it, that's mold. Cleaning out your brine tank is a fairly easy process, especially if you have a two piece water softener with a Clack valve like this one!

Start by planning ahead. You will want to do this when you have a minimal amount of salt in the tank. You definitely don't want to try this when you have a salt clog!! If you do, you can get rid of it by following the advice of another one of my videos. Most water softeners fill the brine tank with water as the last cycle of the Regeneration process, if that is the case with yours, you will see water in the bottom of the brine tank. If you don't see water in the bottom, yours is a "Pre Fill" water softener so you can skip the first two steps of removing the brine and the last four about putting the water softener back into service.

1) To remove the brine in a "Post Fill" water softener like this Clack, start by putting your water softener into a Regeneration, which is easily done by holding down the regen button until the motor starts up.

2) You want to get it into the brine cycle so it starts to suck out the water in the brine tank, which is the second cycle so press the Regen button again and the word Brine will appear on the display. Note the countdown time on the display, you will now have time to go and do something else while the brine is being removed from the brine tank. You could vacuum all of the brine out with a shop vac if you have one or are in a hurry. Place the water softener into bypass.

3) With a 2 piece water softener like this one, you can either clean the brine tank in place or disconnect it and take it outside. With a one piece water softener you would need to clean it in place. You can use dishwashing soap to wash it out and then rinse to remove the soap.

4) Remove the cleaning water by either dumping it out or with a shop vac.

5) Reconnect the brine tank, and add a couple of new bags of salt.

6) Add 3 gallons of water to the salt.

7) Manually, scroll through the Regen cycles to get it back into service, if not already there. Take water softener out of bypass and put it back into service.

8) Set to Regen today so the water softener will Regen at its preset Regen time to make sure you are back at 100% softening capacity.

9) Run several gallons of water to make sure any brine is flushed from the media tank.