Water Treatment Guides
How to size a whole house filter, choose and program a softener, read a water quality report, test a well, treat iron and sulfur, raise a low pH, install and service reverse osmosis, size an ultraviolet system, and work out the order equipment has to be plumbed in.
30 pages in this section.
Softening
- How to Add Salt to a Water Softener Keep a brine tank a third to two thirds full. Overfilling causes bridging, a solid crust that silently stops a softener from regenerating at all.
- How to Choose a Water Softener Choose a water softener from your measured hardness and daily use, not the grain number on the box. Sizing math, salt dose tradeoffs and three real picks.
- How to Clean a Water Softener Brine Tank Clean a brine tank roughly once a year, more often on rock salt. Covers the safety float, the brine well, and what residue each salt type leaves.
- How to Program a Fleck 5600SXT The four settings that matter on a Fleck 5600SXT: hardness, day override, regeneration time and salt dose, with the reasoning behind each.
- How to Set Water Softener Hardness Enter measured hardness in grains per gallon, convert mg/L by dividing by 17.1, and compensate for dissolved iron before programming a softener.
- How to Troubleshoot a Water Softener That Is Not Softening Work through salt bridging, wrong hardness units, an open bypass, iron fouling, a blocked injector, a stuck meter and exhausted resin, in order.
- How Water Softener Regeneration Works The four stage regeneration cycle, how a metered softener decides when to run it, and why there is no generic water use figure per cycle.
- How Water Softeners Work How ion exchange resin removes calcium and magnesium, why the resin needs recharging with salt, and what softening does not do.
- What a Water Softener Does Not Do A softener removes hardness and nothing else: not sediment, not chlorine taste, not dissolved contaminants, not disinfection, not oxidized iron.
- What Water Softener Grain Capacity Means Grain capacity is a ceiling at the maximum salt dose, not a working figure. The salt dose curve, working capacity by nameplate size, and NSF/ANSI 44 efficiency.
Maintenance
- How to Change a Whole House Filter Cartridge Depressurize before opening the housing, and change on a pressure rise of 10 to 15 psi rather than on a calendar date, since a carbon cartridge gives no pressure warning at all.
- How to Change Reverse Osmosis Filters Prefilters typically change annually and protect the membrane, which changes far less often. Depressurize first, flush new prefilters before reconnecting the membrane, and confirm rejection with a TDS meter.
- How to Set Reverse Osmosis Tank Pressure A wrongly charged storage tank is the usual cause of a reverse osmosis trickle, and it is free to fix. The air charge has to be set with the tank completely empty.
Testing
- How to Check Your Water Pressure Measure static water pressure at the hose bib, read what 40 to 80 psi actually means, and know when a 10 to 15 psi rise means the filter needs changing.
- How to Get a Water Test Get a real water test: the free annual Consumer Confidence Report for city water, a certified laboratory test for well water, and which panel to buy.
- How to Read a Water Quality Report Read a Consumer Confidence Report or a private lab report correctly: MCL vs action level, primary vs secondary standards, and units that change the answer.
- How to Test Well Water What to test a private well for, how often, how to collect a valid sample, and which certified laboratory panel actually fits your situation.
- What Order Should Water Treatment Equipment Go In The correct plumbing order for sediment, iron, softener, RO and UV, plus where a well pressure tank and an acid neutralizer fit. One of the highest demand questions in this category.
- When Water Treatment Is Not a DIY Job The specific test results, well conditions and installs that mean calling a professional or the health department, not buying equipment. A safety checklist.
Filtration
- How to Choose a Whole House Water Filter Choose a whole house filter by peak flow, staged micron sizing and the specific NSF/ANSI standard each stage actually holds, not the word certified.
- What Size Whole House Water Filter Do I Need? Size a whole house filter by peak flow, not household size. Bathroom count, fixture flow rates and housing sizes explained with published figures.
Installation
- How to Install a Whole House Water Filter Where a whole house filter goes in the line, why it sits before the water heater, and the bracket, bypass and gauges that make the job serviceable for years.
- How to Install an Under Sink Reverse Osmosis System An under sink reverse osmosis system needs a faucet hole, a drain saddle and a cold supply tee, which is why it is more work than a carbon filter. A first flush before drinking finishes the job.
Well water
- How to Install an Iron Filter for Well Water An iron filter goes after the pressure tank and before the softener, needs a correctly sized drain line, and only works if the media matches your measured pH.
- How to Raise Low pH Well Water Low pH well water is corrosive, not toxic on its own, and shows up as blue green staining and pinhole leaks. A certified laboratory test decides the media, and it is also a lead question.
- How to Shock Chlorinate a Well Shock chlorination treats the symptom, not the cause. A positive coliform test needs a certified laboratory test, an entry point investigation and usually a professional.
- How to Size a UV System for a Well A UV system is sized on peak flow, not household size, and dose falls as flow rises, so an undersized system fails silently. Class A and Class B are not interchangeable.
- How to Treat Iron in Well Water Ferrous, ferric and bacterial iron each need a different machine. Getting the form wrong is the most expensive mistake in well water treatment.
- How to Treat Sulfur Smell in Well Water A rotten egg smell only on hot water is usually the anode rod, not the well. Establishing which one it is costs nothing and decides the entire fix.
Appliance protection
Researched, not professional advice. Everything in this section is compiled from published standards, regulatory limits, manufacturer specifications and owner-review consensus, not hands-on testing. Nothing here diagnoses a water problem or says any product makes water safe to drink. Published figures and rules of thumb are labeled separately wherever both appear, and where a published figure does not exist we say so rather than estimating one. Test your water first, and treat bacteria, nitrate, lead, arsenic and PFAS as laboratory and professional territory rather than shopping decisions.