Water heater corrosion

[SmedleyPlumbing]

We have a customer with a less than two year old water heater experiencing anode and tank corossion at an extremely high rate. Softner service repair tech says the softner is working correctly. We tested water after two seperate regenerations. Conductivity on the first test was 283ppm. The second test was 485. Any Ideas?

[ion_avenger]

That softener repair tech needs to go back to school!!!
You definitely have a problem with that softener

High conductivity after a cleaning cycle means one of these things-

-bad air-check on float
-short riser
-bad riser o-ring
-low water pressure
-mechanical failure on softener valve
-obstructed drain
-bad programming

What brand and model of softener is this?

Is this city water or well water?

[SAWATER]

Still, don't discount the anode. Most manufactures have switched to all aluminum anode rods unless the supplier request differently. We have seen inside 3 months the anodes are completely exhausted. Break down is occurring so rapidly that the anodes are out gassing something awful. Manufacturers claim that sometimes aluminum content isn't correct ( yea sure ). Manufactures are telling us to replace with another all aluminum rod. We replace with magnesium. Good luck and I also agree with ion avenger, check that softener.

[greg-cws]

Gary & his partner Randy gave me samples of the water for testing:

1st Day
Hardness - 0gpg
Iron - 0ppm
TDS - 300ppm
Sodium - 480ppm
pH - 8.0

2nd Day
Hardness - 1gpg
Iron - 0ppm
TDS - 530ppm
Sodium - 890ppm
pH - 8.3

It certainly appears that there is an issue related to regeneration of this particular water softener. The high TDS & sodium residuals without hardness bleedthrough indicate incomplete rinsing after regeneration. This is one of the big reasons why we incorporate multiple rinse cycles and pulsed-rinsing technology into our softeners to avoid this exact issue.

Gary, is this a softener with a Clack head (Gray LCD display) or Fleck head (red LCD display) ?

I agree with George on the anode, have you pulled it yet?

As a side note:
An anode decomposing after 3 months is a MAJOR problem. Have you tested the water going into that water heater?

[SAWATER]

There have been many water heaters in San Antonio with what the manufacturer
(State Manufacturing) claims were defective anodes. The particular situation referenced is one of our installations. This was unusual because 2 water heaters supported this house. An electric water heater, which we also installed 6 months previous , supported 1 full bath, 1 half bath and utility room. A gas fired heater took care of master/bath and kitchen. There is a Culligan onsite and operational. Both heaters are State, yet only the gas heater was effected. So, I didn't test product water. Can improperly working water softeners contribute to anode problems?

[greg-cws]

A malfunctioning water softener can indeed exacerbate the problem.

As we all know, water softeners clean water through an ion-exchange process, substituting hardness ions (calcium and magnesium) with sodium or potassium ions. At some point the softening resin becomes saturated with hardness ions and needs to be "regenerated" by exposing it to a strong brine solution. Through mass-action, the hardness ions will be released from the resin and replace with sodium or potassium ions as the case may be.

Water softener manufacturers will automate the cleaning process based on estimates of the customer's influent water pressure, salinity, pH etc...
This automated process should completely rinse the resin bed and then reclassify it in preparation for another duty cycle.

If a softener doesn't clean itself properly, then a homeowner might notice salty water the day after regeneration. This water is neither potable or friendly to plumbing piping, faucets and fixtures. This problem was endemic in the 60's and 70's because most softener manufacturers didn't include a "backwash" cycle on their systems.

In the 1980's a few innovative manufacturers (Fleck & Erie) began to incorporate backwash cycles which improved things considerably.

Unfortunately, most softener manufacturers still only use 1 or 2 backwashes during cleaning and it is not uncommon for the softener to leave trace residual of regenerant in the water after a regeneration. This can be confirmed by testing the effluent (water to service) immediately after a regeneration. Ideally, there should be no more than 10% increase in conductivity between the hard and soft water. Conductivity increases because the sodium/potassium ions are more conductive than calcium and magnesium.

Water that is >10% more conductive than the influent can indeed contribute to faster anode decomposition. Often, the conductivity increase isn't noticed by the homeowner, since it doesn't actually taste "salty".

The way Intermountain addresses this issue is to perform multiple rinses, as well as pulsed vortex technology, where the control will vary backwash flow rates multiple times over a period of time depending on the water hardness, system age and other factors.

[greg-cws]

I just heard from Randy at Smedleys that Pacific Water Conditioning, the softener manufacturer is replacing this softener with a brand new one. Kudos to Richard and the boys at Pacific, that's excellent customer service!

[SmedleyPlumbing]

Thanks for the help everyone. Gary