1. Keep the garage door closed, especially at night. This might sound a little simple but more than once we’ve seen water softeners freeze up solid when kids left the garage door open at night.
2. Keep a bottle of water near the water softener in the garage. If the bottle of water is frozen, then the softener probably isn’t far behind.
3. Keep a thermometer in the garage. If you see the temp start to drop below 32 degrees then maybe you want to keep a space heater by the softener just for the night or until the temperature comes back up.
4. Don’t think that a softener can’t freeze because “it has salt water in it”. A water softener only uses salt to remove the hardness it has collected in the regeneration cycle. A softener simply exchanges hard water minerals like calcium and magnesium for the sodium part of salt, so what is actually in a softener when it is in service will be water with those three elements in it as well, not salt water.
5. Its true that the salt tank will have salt water in it and it will be much more difficult for it to freeze but on a lot of softeners the regeneration cycle usually ends by putting fresh water in the salt tank for the next regeneration cycle. This means that the brine line or the small tube that runs to the salt tank CAN freeze and split.
If you have any questions, concerns or need your system looked at please feel free to give us a call or reach out to us online.