Water softener salt: which kind, how much, and how often

Your softener does the hard work; the salt just keeps it able to do it. The whole routine is a five-minute check every month or so. But walk down the salt aisle and you'll find pellets, crystals, solar salt, and potassium chloride — and the wrong choice or an empty tank means hard water is quietly back in your pipes. Here's what actually matters.

First: what the salt actually does.

Your softener's resin beads grab hardness minerals (calcium and magnesium) out of your water. Every so often, the system "regenerates" — it flushes the beads with salty brine, which knocks the minerals loose and sends them down the drain. No salt in the tank, no brine, no regeneration — and your softener becomes a very expensive pipe fitting. That's the whole story.

Pellets, crystals, or potassium chloride?

For most Orlando homes on city water, high-purity salt pellets are the easy default: they dissolve evenly and leave less residue in the tank. Solar crystals work fine too and are usually a little cheaper. Block salt is fine if your tank takes it. The one to think twice about is rock salt — cheaper, but it carries more impurities that build up as sludge in the brine tank over time.

Potassium chloride is the sodium-free alternative: it regenerates the resin the same way, without adding sodium to the water. It costs more per bag, and you'll go through it a bit faster. Some households prefer it on principle; if sodium in drinking water is a concern for you, it's worth discussing with your doctor — and many homes on softeners already use a separate drinking-water filter at the kitchen sink. Here's how that pairing works.

How much salt, and how often do you check?

Keep the tank about half to two-thirds full, and make sure the salt level always stays above the water level in the tank. Check once a month — it takes seconds: lift the lid, look. A typical Orlando family on city water (remember, ~7 grains per gallon hardness) might go through a 40-pound bag every 4–8 weeks, but that varies a lot with household size, water use, and how hard your specific water is. Don't overfill the tank to the brim — packed salt can "bridge," forming a hard crust with an empty gap underneath that tricks you into thinking there's salt when the water below is starved of it. If you tap the tank and hear a hollow sound under a crust, break up the bridge with a broom handle.

The mistakes we see most.

• Letting it run dry for weeks. The softener can't regenerate, hardness returns, and scale starts building again. Usually no permanent damage — just refill and run a manual regeneration.
• Using rock salt to save a few bucks. The sludge buildup means cleaning the tank out far sooner.
• Ignoring the tank for six months. Out of sight, out of mind — until the spots on the glasses come back.
• Oversizing salt doses "just in case." Modern softeners meter by actual water use; dumping in extra salt doesn't help and just wastes it.

Don't have a softener yet? Start with the test.

Salt questions only matter once there's a softener in the garage. If you're still deciding, the decision starts the same place everything water-related starts: a free in-home test of your actual hardness. Thirty minutes, no obligation — and if a softener makes sense for your home, we'll size it to your water so you're not guessing on salt for the next decade.