Water Softener Fails in Scottsdale Rental Home

Last week a tenant called saying he had no water in the home. The city of Scottsdale had come out and verified there was water being delivered to the home and that there were no current delivery problems. The hose bib where city service enters the home was flowing water as usual, but no other faucet, toilet, etc., had water.

This home had a water softener, so I immediately assumed there was some type of blockage in the softener. I advised him to attempt to bypass the softener, which he did. That didn’t change anything. Lack of water is an emergency situation, even more so than lack of AC, so I called up my after hours plumber (it was 6pm), and headed over myself to meet the plumber and see what the problems was.

The plumber and I arrived within 2 minutes of each other. He too suspected the water softener, and suggested the cheapest and easiest solution would be to cut out the old water softener, and close up the loop, eliminating the blockage that seemed to be coming from the softener. The next day I could discuss with the landlord whether he’d like to put in a new softener. So the plumber cut it out and left this in place of the water softener.

We then re-checked the water supply in the home, but there was still no water. UGH. I was really hoping that we hadn’t just cut out a perfectly fine water softener, for no reason. That’s when we noticed resin was coming from the improperly terminated drain line for the softener. The green tube sticking up here is the same green tube going through the hole in the wall. This was found in the rocks beside the home, just 10 feet from the water softener location. That yellow stuff is resin, a somewhat sand-like substance that’s actually a synthetic. It’s not supposed to ever get out of the softener, as it’s used to attract the impurities a softener is designed to eliminate from the water. Apparently this particular softener had failed catastrophically.

Once the plumber saw the resin in the drain line, he knew it would also be in the pipes throughout the home. A quick inspection of some of the faucets in the house found this resin gumming up the faucets, preventing the flow of water. Considering the scope of the problem, my mind started racing, as I considered just how long the tenant might be without water.

Then the plumber had a very good, money saving idea. He suggested turning on the water at the far back hose spigot for the home. So we did. Initially, it didn’t seem like anything was coming out. But after a couple of minutes, a drip was developing, and we could clearly see resin was accumulating under the spigot. After 5 minutes, I snapped this photo. That was at about 8pm.

We watched this steady stream of resin come out of the hose bib for a good 15 minutes, when it finally “cleared” and water began flowing normally. At least one gallon of resin was sitting on the ground under this hose bib when it finally cleared. Putting my hand in the water, there was still a bunch of resin in the water, but we knew that the line would eventually flow clear and normal.

At this point, the plumber left, as this was too large a job to complete this late at night. I contacted my normal handyman, who came out the next morning and finished the job (at a 50% discount to what my emergency plumber quoted me). The fix was primarily a matter of going to each faucet/water supply and opening them up and letting them slowly clear. Bathtubs were the easiest to fix, toilets were the most difficult. All of the toilet floats needed to be replaced, and a couple of other fixtures were also replaced.

In the end, it took my handyman 10 hrs to get the whole house cleared of the resin from the failed water softener. Fortunately, the tenant was without water for less than 24 hrs, and was extremely supportive considering the impact.

As we were assessing the situation, the plumber told me that he had seen 40-50 of these failed water softeners. He added, that the ones that seem to fail are the “inexpensive” $400-$500 softeners. The softeners his company sells cost ~$1400, but come with a lifetime warranty against this problem. Should it ever fail in this way, they would stand behind any downstream impacts.

The softener that failed was a Kenmore brand. The landlord contacted Kenmore and they told him the failure was rare. They didn’t offer to pick any of the expenses he incurred from this rare failure, however.  My advice from now on, to anyone considering the purchase of a water softener, is to investigate the warranty of the softener.  Saving a few hundred dollars today, could cost you much, much more in the future.  This particular Kenmore unit was just over 5 years old.

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