What your system needs,
and when.

Keep the tank at least one third full and never let it run empty. At Indiana hardness of 17 to 22 GPG most households go through a 40 pound bag every 4 to 6 weeks, so a monthly look is enough to stay ahead of it. A softener that runs out of salt keeps regenerating without any, sending hard water through the house until somebody notices.

Humidity can set the salt into a crust that spans the tank with a gap underneath, so the level looks fine while no salt is actually reaching the water. If the level has not dropped in weeks, push a broom handle through the crust to break it.

Iron fouls softener resin over time and a cleaner strips it back out. This matters on well water and on any supply carrying iron. Homes on clean city water can generally skip it.

The valve runs on a meter and regenerates only when your household has actually used its capacity. A look at the back-lit display confirms it is still counting and still cycling.

Even with good owner upkeep, a visit every couple of years catches what you cannot see: worn valve seals, resin that has lost capacity, and settings that drifted out of calibration.

A UV lamp keeps glowing well past the point where it still delivers a germicidal dose. Replacing it once a year is what keeps the system at its rated disinfection performance.

Mineral film on the sleeve blocks UV light before it reaches the water. The sleeve is cleaned or replaced while the system is already open for the lamp change.

The food-grade phosphate cartridge that drops into an AiO or other Aqua Otter housing is replaced once a year. It is a cartridge swap, not a service call.

The Alpha 3000 tells you where it stands. Green means the cartridge has full life remaining. Yellow means roughly 10 percent is left, which is the point to order a replacement. Red means replace the cartridge now.

There is no calendar to track. The indicator is the trigger, so the cartridge gets changed on your household's actual water use rather than on a guess.

The sediment and carbon block stages are the ones that load up, and how fast they load depends on your feed water. A home on heavily chlorinated city water goes through carbon faster than a home on treated well water, so we set the interval from your actual water rather than a generic number. The cartridges themselves are a straightforward swap you can do yourself.

The membrane is the expensive stage and it lasts considerably longer than the cartridges in front of it, precisely because those cartridges protect it. Keeping the sediment and carbon stages fresh is what buys the membrane its life.

Air injection systems regenerate their own air pocket and backwash on their own schedule. There is no chemical to add, no cartridge to swap, and nothing for you to refill.