UPDATED: 2/23/22
You notice an odor coming from your water in your new home, so you got yourself a water softener. You installed your new water softener and your water is nice and soft, but you are still getting the same odor from your water, what’s the problem?
A water softener can remove iron from water which can give water a metallic odor. A standard water softener will NOT remove gasses like hydrogen sulfide (H2S) that can give water a musty or rotten egg odor. Using a carbon filter in addition to a water softener can help remove many odors from water.
A water softener is not a system that fixes all water issues. A water softener will remove hard minerals from your water and is great for improving your water but it will not remove most odors from water, and here’s why!
Can you set a water softener to remove odor from water?
The settings on a water softener are to adjust how the water softener should operate to remove hard minerals including iron from your water.
Odors in water NOT caused by iron contained in your water will NOT be removed from your water no matter how you adjust your water softener.
Setting your water softener to regenerate more often or regenerate more thoroughly will NOT help to remove any odors from your water other than a metallic odor caused by iron in your water.
What does a water softener remove from water that can cause odor in water?
In addition to these minerals, a water softener can also remove iron and manganese from water which can cause staining on surfaces along with odd tastes and odors in the water.
Of the minerals that a water softener can remove from water, the most common one that can cause an odor in water is iron.
As you might guess, iron can give water a metallic odor that makes it much less appealing for drinking or for cooking.
Odor-causing iron can be removed by a water softener by adding 4 to the hardness setting of the water softener for each one Part Per Million (PPM) of iron contained in the water.
Not sure if you have iron in your water that may be causing a metallic odor in your water? You can easily test your water for dissolved iron with a simple Iron test kit.
In other words, if your water has a hardness of 10 Grains Per Gallon (GPG), programming the water softener to a hardness setting of 24 will tell the water softener to regenerate more often in order to remove the iron causing the metallic odor in your water.
What does a water softener remove from water?
A water softener is used to soften water that contains minerals in it that make the water hard. These minerals will inhibit soaps’ effectiveness to clean and can cause irritation of skin and corrosion on surfaces.
Calcium and magnesium are the two most common minerals that a water softener removes in order to make the water soft.
Check out this quick video about what a water softener removes.
Why most odors are not removed from water by a water softener.
A water softener removes hard minerals from water through the process of ion exchange. This process draws hard minerals from the water and attaches them to the water softening resin contained in the water softener.
Then the water softener uses saltwater called brine to replace the hard ions that have collected on the water softening resin and then rinses the hard minerals away.
The ion exchange process that occurs in a water softener to remove hardness from water works great for the removal of hard minerals, but most odors that come from water are caused by small particles or gasses that are not affected by the process of ion exchange.
Are there water softeners that can remove odors from water?
There are some water softeners that use a very special resin called Zeolite that has a neat side benefit.
This resin was originally found to be most beneficial for softening water as well as removing high levels of iron and manganese in the water. But this water softening resin was also found to be able to remove low levels of sulfur from water.
Although this resin is not sold as a sulfur removing resin and is not guaranteed to remove any sulfur from water, in cases where small levels of sulfur are present, it has been found to be helpful in removing it.
Because this is a specialized resin that is used by a large water treatment company that does not want this claim of sulfur removal for their resin to be promoted, I would rather not mention the name of the resin, and I do not recommend it for sulfur removal.
Carbon can also be used in some water softeners to remove odors from the water. Often the carbon is in a separate chamber of the water softener, to remove the odor-causing particles from the water before it gets softened.
The problem with using a small amount of carbon in a small chamber of a water softener is the carbon may have to be changed frequently.
It is usually recommended to use a large carbon-filled tank to remove odors in water because the carbon will last longer before needing replacement.
Can odor come from a water softener?
- Metallic odor coming from a water softener:
Although it is not common for odors in water to originate inside of a water softener, a build-up of iron or the growth of bacteria inside of a water softener can sometimes occur.
A water softener that is not regenerating its water softening resin correctly can allow iron in the water to collect on the surface of the water softener resin and walls of a water softener. If the iron is not cleared from the water softener, a metallic odor may become present in the water.
If iron gets built up in your water softener, using a dose of water softener sanitizer cleaner will help to speed up the cleaning of the water softener resin.
- Rotten egg smell coming from a water softener:
Because a water softener does not remove sulfur from water using its ion exchange process, sulfur can settle in-between the water softening resin beads and in the under-bed gravel that is in the bottom of the water softeners tank.
A quarter cup of household bleach put inside of the water softeners brine tank will often help to remove the sulfur causing the odor from the tank, but chlorine can damage the water softening resin, so I only recommend using a water softener sanitizer that is designed to be used in your water softener.
What can be done about odors that can’t be removed by a water softener?
Most odors from water are caused by small particles or gasses like hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in the water that can be filtered out using a carbon backwashing filter. The particles settle in the pores of the carbon flakes and are held there until they can be rinsed away by the systems regeneration process.
In some cases where sulfur levels are high, a chlorination feeder system along with a carbon backwashing filter may be needed.
The chlorine is injected into your water to eliminate the sulfur bacteria odor, and then the carbon backwashing filter takes the chlorine and sulfur out of the water before continuing into the home.
If you have hard water, a water softener will remove the hard minerals from your water and make it soft. But if you need to remove odors from water, a water softener will not remove the most common odor issues found in water.
To Sum Up:
The water softener resin in a water softener is NOT intended to remove most impurities in water that could cause odor in your water.
A water softener will NOT remove impurities in your water that can cause odors in your water other than iron.
Most common odors in water are due to gasses in your water that can be removed by using a carbon-based filter in addition to a water softener.
