Water Softeners and Air Filtration Systems - Kennmore Softener Not Running on Auto-Cycle

Hello all,

I have a question about my water softener that really has me stumped. I am hoping to probe the minds of people here who may have had this issue themselves, or have treated it on another softener.

The Kennmore softener in my house will not run unless it is activated manually. It has a clock, and a setting that will run it at a set time when needed, mine is set to run at 4:00 am when it is set to "recharge tonight. After a while my wife and I began to notice that the softener was consuming no salt. The "recharge tonight" indicator would start blinking during the day, and in the morning, it would be off, and through marking the salt level of the softener and leaving it alone for a time to "recharge tonight" several times, we were convinced that was using no salt. For clarification, I am not sure how the softener makes the determination of when it needs to recharge, but when it does, it initiates the "recharge tonight" cycle. That cycle can be started manually by hitting the button once, or it can be made to run immediately by holding it down. According to the manual, the softener should run at the specified time when it is given the "recharge tonight" command.

We have taken to checking the softener periodically, and if the recharge tonight light is blinking, we will just override the softener and start the cycle before bed. This works well enough, the softener consumes salt, and we get soft water, but if we miss it, you can tell, because the water from the taps gets hard and starts to smell a little different (a slight chlorine smell, we have city water).

I have tried replacing all the seals in the unit, and using the special grease (Sears parts and service sells a seal kit), because I heard that when the seals wear down, it can gum up the unit and make it work un-reliably, but this didn't make complete sense to me when I was doing it due to it always running when activated manually, but never when left to activate itself. But, that was a cheap endeavor, and I figured if it worked, more the better. Well, it didn't, and I am stumped. I think it may be something in the electronics, or perhaps the programming, but I don't really have the knowledge to diagnose it, and the owners manual and the service manual both really don't touch on my specific issue.

I am wondering if anyone has had a similar issue, and can provide some insight for me. I am sorry that I don't have the model number immediately available, but I can reply to this post later with that information.

Thanks in advance,
ShelbyCobra

You're off to see the Wizard ...

See this thread ... http://forum.doityourself.com/showthread.php?t=174318

Check these links for diagnostic help ... http://forum.doityourself.com/showthread.php?t=206047

Let us know how it goes.