Can Water Be TOO Soft? Water Softener Troubleshooting

Have you noticed since you’ve had a Water Softener installed that your skin feels slippery or even slimy now? Do you need to be careful entering the shower because the floor is very slippery? When you wash dishes do they tend to slide out of your hands in the water? What about your skin, do you find that your skin is so slippery after a shower it actually feels slimy?

These frequently asked questions can be resolved with today’s troubleshooting tips from Gary The Water Guy on how to fix “too soft” water for your family.

CAN WATER REALLY BE “TOO SOFT”?

Over the years I’ve heard a few families mention this phenomenon after installing a new water softener, and I have found that it is typically one of two things causing this concern.

1. Using too much soap or shampoo. One of the many advantages of a water softener is that you can and should use LESS soap to get much better cleaning. In fact, this is one of the many ways a water softener will save your family money. When you have a water softener installed in your home, you can often get by using HALF the amount of soap, body wash, or shampoo that you used before the water softener was installed. Excess soap causes slipperiness.
2. The hardness settings in the water softener are incorrect. Oftentimes, water softeners are installed by plumbers or DIYers without actually testing and programming the water softener. In turn, the water softener default setting may be way too high for your family and you end up with excessive sodium in your water after the regeneration which causes the slipperiness. Those incorrect settings also result in you using far more salt than you should, wasting your money. Be sure to have your settings checked out to ensure optimal programming of your water softener.

Now, occasionally, I’ve run across the situation where the first two items mentioned above were fine, but the family still has concerns about this slippery feel. In those situations, you need to mix some untreated hard water with the treated soft water to make the water slightly “less hard”.

If you have a WaterBoss or Aquamaster water softener you can slightly open the bypass to allow a little untreated past the bypass. For other water softeners, you would need to install a 3-way bypass around the water softener and leave the bypass slightly open to mix the water. This is not an exact process and requires a bit of trial and error to get the right amount of water mixing but it works great!

Check out this video on 3-Way bypasses for more information or reach out to Water Store Midland for further assistance.

​

Looking for more? Your next video on water softeners is right here.