Here are the answers: 1) Yes. The brine tank is being emptied during regeneration and water is being added back into the brine tank. 2) The brine tank is full (4-6" from the overflow) when the regeneration is complete and it is back in service. 3) So far, one regeneration cycle has completed. Upon completion of the first regeneration cycle, the water through the faucet was orange/brown. It got better but wasn't switching to clear so I put it back in bypass mode so no water was coming through the softener. After reading the manual again, I had opened the wrong valve first (outlet) on the bypass. The manual states "When returning to service, put the inlet into service before the outlet." I'm not sure if that matters, but I'm just trying to give you as much information as possible. I'd say we ran about 15-20 gallons before switching it to bypass mode. It is currently in the middle of the 2nd regeneration. It is in the middle of the 2nd cycle which is the brine draw cycle and is 60 minutes. There is about 20 minutes left in the cycle and the brine tanks has about 2 or so inches of water left in it. When this regeneration cycle is done, the system will have undergone two renegeration cycles with about 15-50 gallons of water run through it. Thanks. Holding tight now.

Okay, softener 101. 1. You have a 40,000 grain softener. 2. Take off 15% reserve. This is necessary because you don't want it regenerating itself in the middle of your shower or a load of laundry. You want it to regenerate in the middle of the night when you are less likely to be using water. You also do not want to experience hard water so that 15% gives you a buffer. This leaves you with 34,000 grains capacity. 3. Now, you could actually use nearly all of that capacity and regenerate every 6.4 days. My initial estimate was 7 days, but remember I was using 75 gallons per day per person. You have now informed us you use closer to 83 gallons per day per person. In order to maximize time between regeneration, you have to maximize the amount of salt you use and regenerate with 15 lb/cuft, a total of 18.75 lb per regen. This would result in a salt usage of about 88 lb per month. 4. To increase your salt efficiency, you should regen with 6 lb of salt per cuft of resin. This will result in regenerating every 4.8 days and use about 47 lb of salt per month. This buys you salt efficiency at the cost of water efficiency. More frequent regen = more water usage. 5. Your softener is undersized, as previously stated. Be aware that during those times of the year when you use more water, have guests, etc, that your softener will reach another limitation. Ad two guests for a few days and the softener will regen every 3 days. Ad three guests and it regens every two days. Four guests and it regens every day. Now you don't have enough time for the salt to dissolve in the brine and you get incomplete regeneration, compounding your problems. I would be happy to explain WHY it works this way if you are interested. Is there any possibility of returning this softener and getting one size appropriately? If not, we move on to correctly setting up your softener to function to the best of its ability. Do you have the manual? If so, we can walk through correct setup. If not, I can provide a link and then we can walk through correct setup.

http://www.qualitywaterforless.com/v/vspfiles/downloadables/fleck/56sxtins.pdf Here is a PDF with instructions on how to program your system.

Thank you gentleman and Alice for all your input and help. Lurker, I am going to find a local certified lab tomorrow and have my water tested. I will return here with the results once I have them. My husband thinks I'm crazy for spending so much time researching this, but although the softeners are relatively inexpensive, we are on a very tight single income and I want to make sure that we are purchasing the proper equipment for our needs. I think we will also need some kind of filter as well because the previous system we had at the house (here when we moved in) was a Hague Watermax, which I understand was a Whole House Filtration/Softener. I know that the water softener will not filter out any of the chlorine/chlorides. Any thoughts on this? cntl4userguy, I was going by the IRWD report and this is what it stated: "Unlike many areas of Orange County, IRWD is not dependent upon only one source of water. Approximately 65 percent of our total domestic water supply is local groundwater pumped from wells within the Orange County Groundwater Basin. The remaining 35 percent of our water supply is imported water which must be purchased from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). Note: some areas of the District such as Lake Forest and Newport Coast receive mostly MWD water all year-round." I live in Lake Forest, so this is what I was going by. In any case, I will have the water tested ASAP and let you know what I find. Thank you again for all your help. I do appreciate it.