What is The Best Salt to Use For My Water Softener?

Q: What is the best salt to use for my water softener?

The best salt to use for your water softener is high-quality, pure, food-grade salt, ideally with 99.9% sodium chloride (NaCl). Most water softeners use tablet salt, but some may prefer block salt. Low-quality salt can cause residue and reduce efficiency. Popular choices include Kinetico block salt and Brøste tablet salt.

In short: Use high quality, pure, food grade salt. Preferably 99.9% NaCl. Water Softeners all take tablet salt, but a few prefer block salt. Using low quality salt can lead to residue and poor efficiency.

Good Quality Salt

We recommend 99.99% NaCl content salt blocks or tablets.

Check your softener to see what type is right for you. All softeners can take tablet salt, but only the following (of our range) can use block salt:

Kinetico 2020c
Kinetico Premier Compact
Nexus Resolve
Nexus Resolve XTRA

If we installed your water softener, and do not know what model yours is, contact us, and we will be able to tell you.

Good quality salt will:

Increase your softener's projected lifespan.
Prevent resin becoming useless.
Keep parts functioning, leading to fewer services and a lower overall cost.

These salt brands are best for water softeners:

Kinetico water softener block salt
Expo (Brøste) salt tablets
Watersprite small block salt

All of these salts are available to purchase here.

If you are using this salt, and still experiencing issues, check our salt troubleshooting page!

Poor Quality Salt

If the price of salt is too good to be true, it's normally because it isn't good!

Even reducing the purity of the salt from 99.9% NaCl to 99.5% NaCl can have a massive impact on your machine's health.

Bad quality salt will:

Clog up moving parts with non-salt debris.
Reduce the efficiency of the resin within the softener
Cause more frequent services, costing you more in the long run!

If you have high quality salt, but there seems to be other problems to do with your salt, check our salt troubleshooting page.

Make sure that bags of salt arrive in a clean state, and occasionally dredge the basin of your softener to rid the salt 'sludge' that forms.

See below an image of the effects of poor quality salt, whose debris may spread throughout your entire plumbing system!

If you are unsure about the quality of your salt, or would like to purchase high quality salt, you can do through our website or phone line!

A picture of two water softener brine tanks, the one on the left has had good quality salt dissolve leaving no marks, but the one on the right has left brown marks due to poor quality salt dissolving.

Bad Salt; A Comparison

This is an image of two identical water softeners. The one on the right using a cheap salt, and the one on the left using Kinetico Block Salt. After causing them to dissolve, the cheap salt creates a layer of residue and muck! Imagine this all throughout your machine and pipework!

As water softener specialists, we are here to help with this problem and recommend to you the best salt to purchase for your machine. Feel free to email us or give a ring, and we will be happy to assist.

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