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I have a Culligan water softener, which also includes the brine tank. There's sufficient salt in the tank, and the softener regenerates regularly as has been programmed, however the water is still hard. I wonder if increasing the salt dosage in regeneration settings would help? Or may be backwash time could be tweaked? What is the rule of thumb for these settings?
Also, is it normally considered that an average person spends about 75 gallons of water per day?
It's possible that the hardness of your water supply has changed over time and that your softener is working just fine to the old setting but that it's no longer enough for the new level. I would suggest that you have the water tested for hardness again, testing both untreated and treated water samples. You may be able to go back to Culligan to get a couple of test kits (to my best recollection, we got a test kit with a vial for the water and test strips when we purchased our last softener), you may have to pay a few bucks for them or they may just hand them out for free.
Once you know the current hardness level, you can adjust the various softener settings for that and it should take care of the problem.
If it's still not getting the water soft enough, then it's likely that there are issue with the softener itself and that would require additional trouble shooting.
It is not unusual for the resin to be partially deactivated by iron compounds. The iron contamination just covers the surface, and interferes with access for ion exchange. It can be cleaned; I found opening the resin bed and mechanically cleaning( agitating ,brushing , rising with pressure) the resin was effective. They do sell chemicals that may work ( I never tried) and salt is sold with an additive to prevent the iron material from precipitating.
