Hartford's chloride guidance, and what it asks of your softener
In January 2023 the City of Hartford Sewer Utility revised its questions and answers on chloride. One of its answers is aimed squarely at home softeners: set them to 20 grains.
Call (262) 829-5961Mon to Fri, 7am to 5pmThe request, in one line
Reset your softener to 20 grains. The sheet makes that request against its own description of city water, typically 18 to 22 grains per gallon, so 20 sits in the middle of the City's range.
Two more points travel with it. Softeners can leave the factory set as high as 30 grains, well above anything the City reports for its water, and the sheet points residents toward demand-initiated softeners, which regenerate according to how much water the house has used rather than by the calendar.
Where your softener's salt ends up
Each regeneration rinses brine, made from the salt in the brine tank, through the resin and out the drain line. In the city that drain line feeds the sewer, and the sewer feeds the treatment plant.
The hardness setting is what the softener assumes about your water. Tell it 30 when the water carries 20, and every grain of the gap is salt sent to the plant for hardness that is not there. That salt is why a sewer utility has anything to say about softeners.
A request written before the 2026 samples
The 2023 sheet could not know what the state would find three years later. Wisconsin DNR compliance samples drawn at the five city wells in February 2026 measured 390 to 450 milligrams per liter, which divides by 17.1 to about 23 to 26 grains.
None of that makes the City's request wrong, and this guide is not going to argue with it. It does mean the most useful number before you touch a setting is the one at your own faucet. If your faucet reads inside 18 to 22, a setting of 20 is exactly what the City asked for. If it reads like the state's samples, you know something the 2023 sheet did not, and a decision about the setting is better made with that in hand.
Reading the number on your control head
The hardness setting is stored in the control head mounted on the resin tank. The manual for your model explains how to display and change it, and if the manual has gone missing, the model name printed on the control head is the place to start looking for a copy.
A reading of 30, or close to it, on a softener nobody remembers adjusting may simply be the factory preset the City's sheet warns about.
Setting a new unit from the faucet, not the factory
A softener supplied for a Hartford house takes its setting from the plumber's reading at your faucet, made on install day before anything is connected, rather than from a preset or a pamphlet. It is demand-initiated, the type the sewer utility's sheet favors.
The same faucet is retested before the plumber leaves, and the work counts as finished only when it shows zero hardness.
Common questions
Does the reset to 20 apply to a well in the Town of Erin or Addison?
The guidance was written about water from the City's utility. A private well has its own hardness, so a softener on one is set from that well's lab report or a reading at the faucet, not from the City's range.
Do I need a new softener to follow the guidance?
Not if yours still works. The request is a reset, which you can make on the unit you own. A replacement is for a softener that has stopped softening, not one that is merely set too high.
More for Hartford homes
- Water softener installation in Hartford, WI
- Water softener replacement in Hartford, WI
- Well water softeners in Hartford, WI
- Hartford, WI water hardness
- Hartford water guides
- About Hartford Water Softener Co.
- Water softener quotes in Hartford, WI
- Where Hartford's water hardness is published, since the annual report leaves it out
- Inherited a softener with your Hartford house? What to check first
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