Maintaining salt in the tank is a critical part of your water softeners operation. This article identifies different types of salt to help you decide which you'd like to use for your water softener. Together, let's review them below.
RECOMMENDED
There are several different types of salt that are recommended. These include: solar salt, pellet salt, evaporated salt, and some specialty salts. When choosing a salt type to use, the key is to look for one with a high purity level and low contaminants. We recommend a salt that is 99+% pure with less than 1% contaminants or impurities and that it also specifies that it's designed for use in water softeners.
Solar Salt
Solar salt is evaporated salt water in crystal form. It's a very clean salt making it a great choice for water softeners.
Pellet Salt
Pellet salt is made from small salt particles compressed together to form a small pellet or sometimes cubes. Pellet salt is clean and a very good source of salt for your softener. Pellets can also help reduce bridging.
Evaporated Salt
The purest form of salt at 99.99% sodium chloride. A great choice!
Specialty Salts
- KCL (Potassium Chloride) - a sodium alternative, 99.9% free of sodium for households with dietary restrictions. Special programming is required when using this salt type.
- Rust and Iron Removal - helps assist in removing iron from the resin beads during regeneration cycles. For proper use instructions, visit our Rust-Control Salt article.
NOT RECOMMENDED
Note: Product performance problems or damage due to incorrect salt usage may void your product warranty.
Block Salt
Block salt comes in different sizes ranging from 5lb blocks up to 50lb blocks. We do not recommend using any size block salt in your water softener for several reasons.
- First, block salt doesn't provide the necessary salt dissolution required to efficiently regenerate the water softener's resin. What this means is that the resin in the water softener doesn't get cleaned or rinsed properly, resulting in hard water.
- Secondly, the salt sensor is designed to measure the amount of salt in the tank, based on a leveled load of salt. With block salt, the sensor may not accurately read the quantity of salt, which could result in running out of salt or unnecessary “low salt” alerts from the water softener.
Rock Salt, Ice Melting Salt, Ice Cream Salt, Granulated Table Salt, Pool Salt
Many of these salts contain higher levels of insoluble minerals. Over time, this can result in salt bridging and a muddy tank. Using these salts also lead to lower softening efficiency while leaving impurities in your water, which is not something you want. We do not recommended these for water softening.
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