Skip to Content

Home Water Treatment System Installation & Maintenance Tips

Installation of a home water treatment system will vary based upon the make and model. Some systems require professional installation. Please consult with your salesperson or the manufacturer before installing your system.

Disposal and Recycling

Most water treatment systems do not contain recyclable parts. However, the mineral tank may be reusable.

Call the water treatment manufacturer to see if they can recharge the mineral tank and install it on another customer’s system. To dispose of the rest of the unit, find out if your solid waste provider will collect it at the curbside or if you need to bring it to a specific facility for disposal.

Home Water Treatment Timing and Seasonality

Larger home water treatment systems such as reverse osmosis (R/O) or water softeners are usually set up with a timer device that limits their hours of operation. These systems are programmed to perform regeneration and cleaning functions when there is no other water use occurring in the house.

Ideally these devices should be programmed to perform regenerative functions between the hours of 2 and 5 a.m. when there is seldom any other indoor use.

Research has shown that this is the period during which the least amount of indoor water use occurs, as shown in Figure 1. Here it can be seen that less than 4% of all indoor water use occurs between 2 and 5 a.m. More than 88% of indoor residential water use occurs between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.


Figure 1: Typical indoor hourly use pattern.

Michael Joseph