Leaking water softener

[bolst3r]

Hi,

So I found water under my skirting boards, after lots of investigation I found two leaks on my Monarch Midi water softener:

- Inlet hose
- Outlet black nut

I think the inlet is straightforward as long as I know what washer to replace in the high pressure braided hoses but i'm not sure what is possible on the outlet plastic black nut? Is this where the turbine is located? Can I spin this off, clean the inner then PTFE the thread and nip up or am I likely to enter a whole world of pain?

By the looks of it it's been leaking for years and it's only now the water level has reached a tipping point that i've noticed it. Very frustrating as it should have been resolved ages ago.

I've attached a picture to show the nut/thread that's leaking.

I can call Monarch Monday but wondered if this was possible to do myself?

Watersoftner

• bolst3r
• 18 Jan 2020

 

[bobasd]

how come you've not been occasionally cleaning the reservoir out, and changing the contents?
do you have Mfr's instructions for doing this?

presume the w/s is in a sink base unit?
call Monarch with any visible name & code #, and as is installed pics.
can you pic more context without any rags etc - show the whole (under sink?) area?

can you shut off your main water service? have you tried?

typically, i would replace any flex hose without messing with the rubber - remove the hose and take it to a plumbing suppliers for a replacement.
flex hoses only need nipping up - no strong arm stuff.
after removing the outlet black nut take any washer to p/suppliers as well.

 

[bolst3r]

how come you've not been occasionally cleaning the reservoir out, and changing the contents?
do you have Mfr's instructions for doing this?

presume the w/s is in a sink base unit?
call Monarch with any visible name & code #, and as is installed pics.
can you pic more context without any rags etc - show the whole (under sink?) area?

can you shut off your main water service? have you tried?

typically, i would replace any flex hose without messing with the rubber - remove the hose and take it to a plumbing suppliers for a replacement.
flex hoses only need nipping up - no strong arm stuff.
after removing the outlet black nut take any washer to p/suppliers as well.

Thanks for the response, I've tried to answer your questions below:

> how come you've not been occasionally cleaning the reservoir out, and changing the contents?

There is nothing in the original documentation about how or needing to do this. It has been filled with salt when needed.

> call Monarch with any visible name & code #, and as is installed pics.

I called Monarch, they can send an engineer but the call out and subsequent time is quite expensive, on a water softener that's ten years old this might be a waste of money. They did however say the leak from the black plastic nut (union joint) might be an o-ring so are sending out a replacement.

> can you shut off your main water service? have you tried?

I can and will have to do this to work on the unit. Ideally there would be isolation valves on both the inlet/outlet to make working easier. I'm a little frustrated there isn't but it's quite tight so this might be the reason. It does leave me with an issue, if I work on it and turn the water on and the leak is worse and there are no iso valves then the whole house will be without water. If this does happen is there a way to cap the HF braided hoses like a mock or temporary iso valve until I can get a new softener installed?

> typically, i would replace any flex hose without messing with the rubber - remove the hose and take it to a plumbing suppliers for a replacement.

I was hoping to undo the hose, remove the fibre o-ring and take this to the plumbing supplier for a replacement. It's not an easy job getting to the other connecting end and I don't want to disturb what is there. Not ideal but i'm hoping this will be ok.

The reality is i've not had the softener serviced so the its life will be reduce. If I can patch it up I might get another year or two out of it before it packs in. I'm ok with this. My biggest fear is turning off the water, changing the washers then having a worse leak and not being able to isolate the feed. If I can find something as a backup to plug the inlet/outlet hoses this is my get out of jail card.

Would you use PTEF on the inlet/outlet thread and union joint? Currently it doesn't.