Leakage

During a service run of a water softener, a certain amount of hardness exits the resin bed with soft water.  This is what leakage is.  Leakage occurs as a result of hardness ions being left in the bed or by channeling the water through the resin bed.  Some causes of leakage are:

• The amount of hardness and/or total dissolved solids in the brine used for regeneration.  For this reason, brine should be made with softwater.
• The effectiveness of the regeneration which could be a function of the salting rate, fouling of the resin beads or poor quality brine.
• The flowrate through the water softener could be too high.

As a general rule, the higher the TDS in the brine, the greater the leakage and lower resin capacity.