Best Salt Brand for Water Softener

[DiamondWash]

In your opinion what is the best Salt brand out there to use for Water Softeners? I'm currently using Diamond Crystal Solar Salt and my distributor is discontinuing his salt delivery business so I'm seeing what to switch to or stay the course and have a pallet drop-shipped which is probably going to be outrageously priced.

 

[cantbreak80]

Cargill owns Diamond Crystal.
And, it seems that Home Depot has the market...at least in my area.
My closest location has nearly 300 bags in stock @ $4.03/40#.
I’d be surprised if you couldn’t purchase a pallet load and have HD deliver it.

 

[2Biz]

I tried the Diamond Crystal Solar Salt and it turned my tank into a brown scummy mess. Took me a few hours to clean it and switch back to Mortons.i used the remaining solar Salt to melt snow!

 

[DiamondWash]

With the Morton brand, what style did you go with?

 

[mjwalsh]

With the Morton brand, what style did you go with?

It might be overkill but we have been going with the Morton "Clean & Protect" for almost 6 months now. We shop around for who can load our pickup truck with palette with a forklift & who has the best deal at the moment. We have access to forklift at the carwash so that makes things less labor intensive. Keep in mind the laundromat portion of our business REQUIRES WAY MORE SOFT WATER!

 

[2Biz]

With the Morton brand, what style did you go with?

I use the Clean and Protect in the 40# bags...Only use about a bag a month or less. Regin is at 9000 gallons so it is very economical.

 

[soonermajic]

I use the Clean and Protect in the 40# bags...Only use about a bag a month or less. Regin is at 9000 gallons so it is very economical.

You use ONE 40lb bag per month? Doesn't sound like it's even working...?

 

[2Biz]

It works just fine...Softens down to zero grains!

 

[DiamondWash]

A pallet with 50lb bags usually lasts me 4-5 months, when I installed the new Razor I switched from city water for HP rinse to soft water being we are on well water I know what that does to pumps and pipes over time.....NO GOOD

 

[Kramerwv]

Diamond crystal 40lb bags at tractor supply. Never a problem

 

[soonermajic]

It works just fine...Softens down to zero grains!

Don't doubt you, but i simply don't understand how you use about 9 bags/yr? I had a real slow wssh, & used 2/3 bags per week.
How are you able to achieve this? All other guys talking about buying a pallet, which is enough to last you around 10/11 years!!

 

[cantbreak80]

I had a real slow wssh, & used 2/3 bags per week.

Coach,
I suspect you’re softener was improperly set up resulting in overdosing and or too frequent regeneration.
A cubic foot of standard resin can be regenerated to 75% of its capacity with 6 pounds of salt. The remaining 25% requires nearly 12 more pounds of salt. Its extremely inefficient to regenerate a softener to 100% capacity. Some fine mesh resins can achieve 75% capacity with 4 pounds per cu ft.

Nearly every system I’ve serviced is grossly over salting...probably due to installer negligence, inexperience, or profit motive, i.e. they work for a company that sells softener salt. No names mentioned but...it starts with C.

Unless your raw water is so hard you get bruises when you shower, there’s no way a “real slow wash” should ever use 80 to 120 lbs of salt per week.

Just sayin.

 

[SoakZone]

A pallet with 50lb bags usually lasts me 4-5 months, when I installed the new Razor I switched from city water for HP rinse to soft water being we are on well water I know what that does to pumps and pipes over time.....NO GOOD

What size of car wash do you have? We have 1 IBA, 8 Self-serve, 3 Semi truck bays. We seem to go through a pallet every 2 weeks. What type of softener system do you have?

 

[mjwalsh]

Nearly every system I’ve serviced is grossly over salting...probably due to installer negligence, inexperience, or profit motive, i.e. they work for a company that sells softener salt. No names mentioned but...it starts with C.

Just sayin.

We are very concerned that our Twin Fleck Resin Tanks with one Brine Tank needs to be tweaked within its settings. We had & have no local goto that we know of when it comes to Fleck. If we did ... if they guaranteed their work ... we would gladly pay for their help.

Hopefully, our more urgent (projects) problems will be behind us & Cantbreak80 or someone else on the Car Wash Forum can walk us through ... at that time .... what appears to be a pretty intricate tweaking process. The online seller had the right Fleck Setup that we spec'd out but zero support when it came to tweaking to optimize salt usage!!!

 

[DavidM]

Correct salt usage is dependent on quality of water coming into your site. I have one site that starts at 27 grains and another site that starts at 3 grains.
Number of bags used per month isn't a great comparison. That is like comparing your soap cost on the cost per drum rather than the cost per car. If you want to compare with other washes, look at something like lbs of salt used per 10,000 gallons treated but make sure the wash has similar water quality coming in.

If you think you are overusing, turn back the regeneration frequency and test your water every day to see if the hardness starts to go up before a regen cycle. Finding someone that actually understands the process and can set it up correctly is valuable. I am pretty sure most car wash distributors know very little about water softeners.

We buy salt from Lowes. We called and talked to their commercial salesperson and got a better price than what is advertised. They deliver it and we buy 2-3 pallets at a time. Their price was the cheapest in our area.

David

 

[mjwalsh]

Correct salt usage is dependent on quality of water coming into your site.

If you think you are overusing, turn back the regeneration frequency and test your water every day to see if the hardness starts to go up before a regen cycle. Finding someone that actually understands the process and can set it up correctly is valuable.

We will keep our local Lowes in mind ... it is kind of dependent on their local stocking policy for the Morton Clean & Protect. I see 10+ bags get a 10% volume discount but no current stock??? I just signed up for their "when in stock" email notification though.

What complicated our situation was that the local tap water significantly changed their hardness for the better after we first set up our Fleck Dual - 1 Brine setup. We were mostly focused on making sure our resin was put in properly during our initial install. Your gradual verification process for the cams & possibly a new specially sized cam ordered & are tweaked makes sense!

 

[STXCW]

I kinda have to agree that something doesn't sound right with 1 bag a month. Softener is set to regen every 9000 gallons, unless its an extremely slow site then maybe. Our sites use over 100k gallon of water a month, some over 200k and softeners regen multiple times a month. I am strictly going off the 9000 gallon setting, not even factoring salt settings at this point.

 

[I.B. Washincars]

2Biz's site is self-serve only. I don't see that amount of salt usage out of the realm of possibility.

 

[2Biz]

Yea, just a 4 bay SS here...So I don't see anyway near 100K of water usage a month....So basically it averages 2 +/- regins a month. Even if I did 100K a month, I would be looking at 5 bags or less...Not a pallet in 2 weeks! Like others have mentioned, incoming hardness makes all the difference. Mine comes in at 4-5g....Some would say, why do you soften then? I say why not, I have the equipment and getting to zero grains lets me get the most out of my soap...It might be worth it for any of you to get an expert in to set your softener up properly....I would think getting your wash as efficient as possible would be very high on the list.

2 years ago my Twin Fleck 9000 needed rebuilt. Cost me $600 for a complete rebuild and motor assembly...The technician tested my incoming water and made significant changes all based on incoming hardness.....It wasn't even close before he made changes!

 

[MEP001]

We will keep our local Lowes in mind ... it is kind of dependent on their local stocking policy for the Morton Clean & Protect. I see 10+ bags get a 10% volume discount but no current stock??? I just signed up for their "when in stock" email notification though.

What complicated out situation was that the local tap water significantly changed their hardness for the better after we first set up our Fleck Dual - 1 Brine setup. We were mostly focused on making sure our resin was put in properly during our initial install. Your gradual verification process for the cams & possibly a new specially sized cam ordered & are tweaked makes sense!

There are no cams for setting a Fleck twin tank. There are pins that set the brine refill which is what determines how much salt it uses. It's a simple calculation to determine.