If you live in Austin or the surrounding areas, there is a good chance that you have hard water in your home. Nearby city, San Antonio, has been named amongst the highest in water hardness, meaning the water in your home is likely to stain toilets and sinks and may have a peculiar smell as well as taste.
These problems represent only a cursory of issues that homeowners may face if they don’t have a water softener system installed in their home. Although it is probably best to have these systems professionally installed, this article will detail the steps required for a do it yourself installation.
Water Softener Installation
The first step in your installation should be deciding on a location where you would like to install your system. It should be in an optimal location for your home. For example, a whole-house system should be installed in close proximity to where the municipality’s water supply enters your home. Additionally, you want the system to feed into the hot water tank as little as possible, since the hard water could potentially corrode the tank, shortening its lifespan.
Installing your home’s water softener system includes the following steps:
Shut Off the Water
Before you do anything, make sure you shut off the water to your home. Also, shut off the power that is linked to your home’s hot water tank. These precautions mitigate the probability of any accidents occurring while you’re doing the install.
Drain the Water
To further reduce the risk of any accidents, turn on all of the faucets in your home; this helps residual water to drain from the pipelines.
Position the Water Softener
You should ensure that your water softener is level when it is positioned in the desired location of your home and, most importantly, the location should be completely dry.
Run an Overflow Tube
The overflow tube is attached to the water softener system. You want to properly insert this tube into the system to allow for proper drainage.
Final Installation Steps
Now that we have the preliminary steps out of the way, you’re going to want to place a bypass valve on the conditioner head of the system. Next, you need to install tubing attached to the water lines before restoring power to the hot water tank and the water softener. Lastly, turn back on your home’s water supply.
Obviously, this is a challenging installation. If you’re not comfortable doing this yourself, you encouraged to contact American Water at (512) 388-0022 for installation. If you’re still shopping for a water softener, we offer free in-home water tests to determine which water softener will work best for you.