In case you don’t know how water softeners work, check out my YouTube video first by clicking here.​

Basically, within the softener, salt and water is used to make brine. The brine is used to recharge or regenerate the media beads. The more often your water softener regenerates, the more salt and water you use. The more water that is in the brine tank, the more salt it absorbs and then is used up during each regeneration.

So to make sure your water softener uses as little salt as possible, consider the following:

1. High Efficiency water softeners, like AquaMaster and WaterBoss use less salt per regeneration than Standard Efficiency water softeners.
   
   
2. The harder your water is and the larger your family size, the more salt you’ll use but the correct hardness settings make sure your water is soft without wasting salt and water during the regeneration. Have the raw water tested for hardness, iron and manganese and put those settings into your water softener.
   
   
3. Metered water softeners are critical to make sure you’re not regenerating your media too often, while maintaining soft water for your family. If your water softener is not metered, consider replacing it with a modern metered softener to use less salt. 
   
   
4. Make sure that there are no plumbing leaks because with any metered water softener, the more softened water you use, the more often it regenerates and the more salt and water is used for that regeneration. Because of all of the variables mentioned above it’s impossible to predict whether you’ll use 3 bags a year or 4 a month but to make sure you use as little as possible you can:
   

There you have it! Some great advice on how your water softener should be functioning for optimal performance, as well as tips on how to reduce the amount of salt being used in your home, cottage or cabin. 

Have questions? Check out our YouTube channel for hundreds of DIY tips, tricks and maintenance videos. You can also reach out to us via our website here for help.  

Click here for your next video on water softeners and I’ll see you there!

Video Transcription

Gary The Water Guy:
We all know water softeners use salt, but how do you know what's the right amount of salt your water softener should be using? Maybe it's using more than it did before. Maybe you've heard neighbors or other families use more or less salt than yours does. Why is that? What determines the amount of salt used in a water softener? Well, I'm going to explain it to you starting right now.

Gary The Water Guy:
Hi, I'm Gary The Water Guy, and I simplify water filtration to help you conquer crappy water for your family. Now, whether you're a do it yourself homeowner, a plumber or a water treatment professional, this video is definitely for you.

Gary The Water Guy:
Knowing how a water softener works will definitely help you understand the whole process a little bit better. If you're not sure, I've got a link in the description down below that'll take you right to my video on how a water softener works. Basically, how water softener works is water flows into the brine tank, the water touching the salt absorbs the salt, makes it into brine, and the brine's used to regenerate the media. The more water you use, the more often the water softener goes through a regeneration cycle and the more salt and the more water that you're going to use. The larger your water softener, the more often it's going to go through that cycle, again because you're going to be using more water. Now, if you have a standard efficiency water softener like this one here, you're going to use more salt than you would with a high efficiency water softener, like an Aquamaster or WaterBoss water softener.

Gary The Water Guy:
It's highly dependent on how hard your water is. The harder the water, the more brine you're going to use. The more often it's going to regenerate, the more salt that you're going to use. Also, the amount of water you use. Like I say, the larger your family size, you're going to be using a lot more water so it's going to regenerate more often, hence, more salt usage.

Gary The Water Guy:
It's very important that your water softener is a metered water softener, like this HUM water care clack valve water softener, and this Aquamaster water softer. And, basically, what that means is it measures how much water your family uses and then regenerates based on that usage. The older technology time clock type water softener, where we did a calculation and then calculated that it needs to regenerate every three or four days to make sure your family had soft water, definitely used far more salt and far more water than the newer metered water softeners do. With the newer technology, higher efficiency water softeners, it's very important to know not only how hard your water is, how much iron there is in your water and how much manganese, so your water softener is set properly to use the minimal amount of salt possible.

Gary The Water Guy:
Remember I said, the more water you use, the more often your water softener is going to regenerate. Another way that you can minimize salt usage is make sure you have no leaks. Even a minor leak, like a toilet running a little bit or something like that can use far more water than you think it will and, because of that, your water softener will regenerate far more often than it really should.

Gary The Water Guy:
Now, you may be wondering, "Hey, why don't I just lower the salt settings in the programming and that way my water softener will use less salt per regeneration?" Yeah, you're right. It will. But the problem is, you're going to run out of capacity. The day after it regenerates, or the next two or three days, your water will be soft. And then, for the next couple of days, it will be hard before it regenerates again. You definitely don't want that to happen.

Gary The Water Guy:
Because of all these variables, it's difficult to predict exactly how many bags of salt you'll go through a month. Whether it's half a bag a month or whether it's two or three bags a month, it all depends on water hardness, how much water you're using, the efficiency of your water softener and a whole bunch of other things.

Gary The Water Guy:
What are three things that you can do to make sure your water softener uses as little salt as possible for your family? One, make sure that there's no plumbing leaks anywhere. Two, choose an efficient metered water softener and, three, make sure you've had your water tested so that you've got the correct settings for hardness, iron and manganese.

Gary The Water Guy:
For my next video on water softeners, click over here and I'll see you there. Any questions or comments, add them down below. I love reading them and I'd love to answer yours.