My experience with my first Sears softener was that if there was more than a few inches of water in the salt tank, the venturi needed to be cleaned, and possibly it might need a new gasket deep inside the venturi assembly. We have quite a bit of iron in our water, and that was most of the problem which required the cleaning of the venturi. I was amazed at the cost of a new gasket: about $15 from Sears, however it was available on the internet for about half that. It was fairly easy to open and clean the venturi on my softener.
Unfortunately softeners do wear out over time. After cleaning out the venturi assembly a couple of times a year and replacing the gasket that wore out several times over about 15 years, I found that my valve assembly was not turning as easily as it should, and so the valve body would stick. The electric motor drives a small gear that operates a larger gear that moves the valve body inside the valve assembly. With wear over the years and added friction inside the assembly from rust and mineral accumulation, sometimes the gear teeth would slip and the valve would stick in that position. I tried disassembling the valve, cleaning out the accumulation of rust and other minerals and replacing the gaskets and seals, and got the softener working again for a while. But the combination of wear and less than totally smooth surfaces inside the valve body caused it to start sticking again after about 6 months. I also found that the replacement parts were ridiculously high priced.
So finally, a few months ago, I went to Sears and bought a new softener that looked similar to the old one, and measured the same. It cost about $400 and fit very easily to the setup I had made for the previous softener. In an afternoon, I installed the new softener, programmed it, and had crystal-clear softened water again. While I probably could have fixed the old softener with about $200 worth of parts, the unit was over 15 years old, and maybe other parts (like maybe the resin) might soon have started giving me trouble. In my opinion, buying the new softener was a good, sound decision for my situation.
I also have reduced the iron in the water, at least somewhat. I just replaced the 35 year old galvanized water line from my pump house to the house with a new polypipe line. The old galvanized line had rusted badly from the inside out. Volume was way down. it was leaking pretty bad underground and at the end was plugging up the whole house filter every couple of days with flakes of rust and particles of gooey rusty stuff. Now the filter still looks clean after several days of use. I am hoping that will help my new softener to last a long time. I know there is and always will be some dissolved iron in our well water, since our well is drilled into basalt, but obviously getting rid of the old galvanized pipe has reduced the iron in the water a bunch. Replacing the water line was a huge job, but it was necessary and really worth the effort.
Should you just replace the water softener? It is hard to know how to answer that question. Especially without looking at your old softener and probably taking it apart a bit. However with a brand new softener, you would expect that everything would work well, at least for a while. Would calling in an expert be a good decision? Maybe, if you cannot fix it yourself. But plan on that service call costing a couple of hundred dollars, and maybe a bunch more. And the technician may still tell you that your best decision would be to get a new water softener.
I would look up the model of water softener you have on the internet and try to download the instruction manual and parts diagram. Then I would try to clean the venturi assembly, to see if I could get the brine sucked out of the salt tank. If you get that working, and the timer/valve body will go through its full cycles normally, you probably will have fixed the water softener, at least for now. But remember, water softeners, like almost everything else, do eventually wear out. Good luck, hope this helps!
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