If you have a water softener, chances are you’ve encountered a salt bridge issue. Once this occurs, it can be difficult to break apart. A salt bridge occurs when the moisture in your salt tank causes your salt to clump or stick together. When this happens, the salt crystals or pellets bond together above the water level in your salt tank preventing salt vs. water saturation. Your water softener will usually regenerate as normal but without using the salt it needs to cause an ion exchange, your softener will not work properly. Here is a good solution to this issue.
You are going to want to wait until your salt tank is nearly empty or you can remove the salt into buckets until the tank is nearly empty. Go to your local hardware store and pick up a 4-foot piece of ¾ inch CPVC. Put one end of the CPVC into your salt tank making sure that it touches the inner left hand side of the salt tank floor. Now angle the topside of your stick of CPVC until it touches the right side of your salt tank and cut the CPVC 1 inch below your tanks height. What you have done here was to build your own salt splitter. As the salt drops it’s forced to split itself thus greatly reducing the chances of a salt bridge. Leaving the CPVC pipe in place go ahead and add your salt as normal.
