Refilling the salt in your salt-based water softener is a major part of its ongoing maintenance. These particular systems use a brine solution to wash away the hardness minerals and regenerate the sodium-charged resin beads – which are essential to the water softening process.
If you notice that the salt in your brine tank is running low, you’ll need to refill it as soon as possible. You will likely come across common types of water softener salts like crystals, salt pellets, and potassium chloride. But which one do you choose? Salt pellets or potassium chloride pellets? Solar or evaporated salt pellets?
To answer those questions, let’s look at each type of water softener salt and what situation each works best in.
Softener Salt or Softener Potassium Chloride: How Are They Different?
Ideally, water softeners work best with salts that are specially designed for softening water. That means no dicing, table salts or any salt of that kind.
Usually, when you want to change the salt in your water softener, you can choose from either sodium chloride (crystals, pellets and block salt) or potassium chloride.
The type of salt you use can affect the efficiency of your water softener and the regeneration process. It can also impact the amount of sodium that gets into your softened water, the cost of salt changes, and how often your brink tank needs to be cleaned.
From our experience, salt pellets seem to work the best. Standard water softener pellets from companies like Morton or Diamond, or others.