Water Softener in Fort Washington, MD

Fort Washington in brief

Fort Washington stayed rural until about 1960 and is now a suburb of riverfront homes, wooded streets and marinas along the Potomac, with a median build year around 1980. WSSC Water serves the area from its Potomac and Patuxent filtration plants, uses a chlorine residual and adds orthophosphate to coat pipe interiors. The utility's report does not list a hardness figure or which plant feeds a given street, so start with a test.

Steps to take now

1. Get a number. A hardness test on cold kitchen water tells you whether you are dealing with mild or noticeable hardness.
2. Check the salt. On an existing unit, look for a hard crust (a salt bridge) above the water in the brine tank and break it up gently.
3. Reset the clock. After a power outage, many control heads lose their time and regenerate in the middle of the day.
4. Use the bypass. If water is pooling around the unit, set it to bypass so the house still has water.
5. Think about irrigation. If the lawn system shares the main, plan for it to branch off before the softener.

Signs and likely causes

Cost factors

The hardness you measure and the number of people in the house set the size of the unit. Larger Fort Washington homes with several bathrooms may need more capacity or a valve that handles higher flow without a pressure drop. The distance from the main to a drain, any repiping at the tie-in, separating the irrigation line, and hauling off an old unit all affect the total. Irrigation backflow testing is its own job: WSSC requires testable assemblies to be tested annually by a certified cross-connection technician. All plumbing permits in the county come from WSSC.