How OFTEN SHOULD My Water Softener REGENERATE?

Do know how often your water softener regenerates? Does it regenerate every night? How often should it regenerate? What determines the frequency of regeneration anyway? Maybe your water softener is suddenly regenerating much more often or not at all!
Basically in the brine tank, salt and water is used to make brine. The brine is used to recharge or regenerate the media beads. The more water you and your family use, the more often your water softener needs to regenerate the media. Most modern water softeners are the metered or demand initiated type which means they measure how much water you use and regenerate based on their settings. Once you’ve used up their capacity of soft water and start getting into the reserve capacity they schedule a regeneration based on the next regen time setting.
The other type of water softener is a time clock which is exactly as it sounds. If you’re unfortunate enough to have a time clock water softener you need to do more calculations to determine best settings. I say unfortunate because those water softeners are not very efficient. As water usage often varies in households you end up either regenerating too frequently to make sure you have enough soft water between regenerations or not often enough when you have higher demand because you’ve suddenly used more water due to more people being in the home or more water usage or for other reasons.
You can tell if your water softener is metered or time clock by looking to see if there is a cable running from behind the valve into the valve that likely means it’s metered. Most electronic water softeners will indicate water flow through the valve, so just run some water to see if that is the case with yours.
To Calculate your regeneration settings, you’ll need the following information:
Hardness in grains per gallon-gpg (parts per million [ppm] divided by 17)-ex 12
Iron in ppm-ex 1.5 Number of people in family-ex 4
Manganese in ppm-ex .5 Softener size-ex 40,000
If you’re investing in one of our HUM Water Care water softeners, which are all metered and come pre programmed, you just need to calculate the compensated hardness number as follows:
1) Hardness in gpg (grains per gallon) – example 12
2) Multiply the Iron in ppm (parts per million) by 4 – example 1.5 x 4 = 6
3) Multiply the Manganese in ppm by 6 – example .5 x 6 = 3
4) Total up 1-3 to get Compensated Hardness – example 12 + 6 + 3 = 21
Just enter the Compensated Hardness Number for hardness in the settings and you’re done! Now based on your water usage your water softener will regenerate either based on your usage or every 14 days, whatever comes first.
If you have a Time Clock water softener, you’ll need to do a bit more calculating:
Check it out in the video!
So, as you can see there is significantly more involved to correctly setting up a Time Clock water softener compared to metered. Either way you need to know your water chemistry to setup your water softener to make sure it operates efficiently.
Ideally, if your water softener is sized correctly, it will regenerate every few days but at least once every 14 days. If it’s programmed correctly and it regenerates every night, it’s too small. If yours is a metered softener and suddenly it’s regenerating far more often than usual check for leaks in your household plumbing, especially a toilet that doesn’t shut off. Not regenerating at all? Maybe the meter has stopped working?
Any questions or comments about this video or water softeners in general? Please enter them below, I read them all and would love to answer yours.
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[water_estore]

I'll bet you don't know! Check it out to learn more.

[JJHiller]

Great video. I'm in a central illinois town. My home gets it's water from municipal water system. The arsenic level is very high. I do not know if the arsenic is #3 or # 5.. we have hard water as well (9gpg) and we are going to add a softener. What else do I need to do to lower the arsenic.
Thank you.

[dirtydeedz]

My regen cycle started at 7pm tonight and it's normally programmed for 1 am....what does that mean? Is it normal for a water regen to start in the middle of the day?

[masonkeall]

Great video but it would have been nice to have showed how to actually program the days.

[cybilfoster]

Hi Gary - I’m running into the issue of finding a water softener/whole house filtration for my home which only uses about 50 gallons a day as it is a 1-person home. Using your calculations and the smallest unit I have found online at 32000 grains, it would regenerate every 32 days which is too long for the resin beads to sit without regen, correct. What unit should I be looking for? Most articles and videos factor in the standard 4-6 person household which have not been too helpful!

[hayride]

I had just cleaned the clog salt from the brine tank. Should I add water first before pouring in the salt or what should I do? Please help.

[leasamartin]

Hi Gary, thank you for all this information. I am a little lost on it all. Per our city water it is very hard (36) and we have had trouble trying to set out Clack water softener 10x54. I am sure it is not set correctly as times it taste salty and we have a filter on our refrigerator as well. Would love to hear your thoughts

[sakoss]

Great video! Is there a maximum number of days a water softener can go before regenerating? For example, does it need to regenerate at least every 14 days even if the water is still soft?

My calculated regeneration total gal is 2100, but at day 14 we have only used around 1200 gal (only 2 people). The water is still soft and there isn't any noticeable issues. I just wasn't sure if the water softener needs to be forced to regeneration earlier or if I should let it go until it hits the total gal amount. For now I reduced the gal amount to 1500 just to be safe ;).

[seanhennessey]

I just had a Clack WS1 water softener installed at my cottage and the tech set the filter to regenerate at 800 gallons or every Monday whichever comes first. My assumption is he used our test results and estimated usage to calculate this frequency? Our water usage can vary considerably depending on visitors and time of year. For example, if we leave the cottage Tuesday morning after using very little water and don't plan to return until the following Tuesday, it seems a waste to regenerate after minimal usage. Isn't it easier to regenerate manually as we can see our usage between regeneration? And, we can pick a regeneration time when we aren't using the water.

[dmt]

Gary, I've noticed I have some hard water the morning after regeneration. (I have the WS1 head 3 years old) I checked the settings and my hardness was set at 10. I haven't had my water tested for manganese or iron PPM and was thinking I should change my softener to a longer backwash and rinse cycle as I think it's not doing that effectively. All other times my water is soft. I regen at 2 a.m. and there is no water being drawn into the water heater (or anywhere else) at that time. I've tweaked the hardness up to 12, but found your site and thought I'd ask before I monkey with the other settings. Thoughts? Thanks! OH, and I'm on a residential well. 235 ft deep, with 300 gallons of above ground storage (slow producing well)

[johndeer]

I have a Culligan. It just doesn't seem soft or slimy at all. They increased regeneration and softness is at max. they've been out a couple times but it seems off. Still have calcium build up in some places for sinks and toilets ... I know it's not working the way it should. I compared a local grocery store today when I washed my hands and whomever did their system did the job correctly it felt amazing.

[tracytran]

Hello, thanks for great information. How do I change my water softener regeneration frequency and time. I think my water softener was set for everyday for family of 3. I couldn't find that information. I have the meter watersoftener. Thank you very much

[pamzanon]

great video! i know NOTHING about my water softener. i am going watch all your videos. you have the best video on youtube so far...and I've warched alot lol!

[kylebearden]

Great video, very informative!
I recently bought a house with a water softener. We don’t use much water in my household (1500 gallons a month). So, I would like to prevent unnecessary regeneration on my system. I see that at my current hardness level, my system automatically calculated it will regenerate in 3, 700 gallons. So, more than 2 months. My system allows settings for regeneration at those gallons, or at a default number of days (programmed at 1 to 29 days regardless of water usage).

However, my softener system will only allow for a default time regeneration at maximum 30 days, or I can turn it off completely so it only regenerates once the gallon usage is completed.

My question is: do I lose anything by completely turning off the default days regeneration setting and relying solely on the usage regeneration calculator?

Thank you!

[jlr]

We bought a 2 yr old house that already had a water softener system installed. It came with a 20 pages report detailing all kind of stuff. The original owner was a single occupant, and the system was setup for regeneration every 14 days.
Since we are now 2 adults, should I set regeneration to every 7 days?

[paulbrotchie]

Garry your tutorials are great. Thank you. My Fleck sxt 9100 is not softening our water. I have inspected and cleaned the injector assembly and manually backwashed 2 or 3 times over a couple of weeks. I have stirred the brine tank numerous times. On backwash it does recycle brine H20. I don't yet know know how to read/interpret the program settings. I am wondering if I should do a reset/re-program. I will need to access my hardness data etc. I will flush my tankless water heater next. I don't know where to go from here. Any direction would be helpful. Thank you again.

[nivlocnevets]

Hi Gary. Great Video! My Sterling softener regens every 1000 gal. Is there a way to change that to 900? Our water seems perfect for the first 900, but begins to get worse the last 100 gal. Thanks!

[ooopticnerveee]

Hi Gary! I love your videos, they’ve been such a great help in understanding the mystery that is the humble water softener. Just wanted to give another reason why a water softener might not be regenerating that I learned on my own the hard way! If the meter cable gets pulled out, it (obviously) stops calculating how much water is going through, thus stops regenerating. This was one scenario I haven’t seen mentioned in any video or website in my research - I just happened to notice when watching a video about the meter assembly (I was like HEY! Mine’s unplugged! 😂). Now it’s plugged in and finally regenerating on its own. My salt stayed at the same position in the tanks for months until I figured this out. Cheers and thanks again for all the info you give us!

Gary, Excellent video! As a technician in another industry, I really appreciate your detailed explanation, while maintaining simplicity for the average Joe. That said, and I know you'll cringe at this approach, but on our new softener, I simply started at 21 days and reduced by 3 per step until the water remained soft. I know... I know; I'm bad. LOL. I am curious to understand why the complicated math instead of simply taking the actual water usage for the last 6-12 months from the water bills or calling the city, converting from cubic feet to gal (ours is measured in cuft not gal), and then dividing by 30 to obtain the actual usage? Thoughts?

[ursdietschi]

Hi Gary,
Thanks so much for your very informative videos.
We had our Clack water softener installed by a professional plumber but I am not sure that the settings are correct. We are a 2-4 person household.
His settings are: Hardness 20, Capacity 24, 000, Salt usage 9.5 lbs
Our well water analysis shows: Hardness - 172 ppm (10 g/gal), Iron - 0.075ppm, Manganese 0.078 ppm
The resin tank size is 1054 (10" x 54"), that's 48, 000 Grain Capacity, right?
What should the settings be for hardness, capacity and salt usage?
Thanks.