I agree Reach4...it is all mystifying to me, and I am only the student!
Before I touch those two back flappers, the water flows straight into the salt water brine tank. As soon as I give them a flick forward and back, the same water pressure sound seems there, but it changes immediately to suction, with an extra sound like bits of air being drawn into the main valve.
The procedure I use now is to turn it from reconditioned water, straight onto the backwash position. I leave it there for about 10 minutes, and it sends the water out of the drain connection, that is between the inlet and outlet connectors. It runs slightly dirty for about 10 seconds, and then keeps running out clear.
The next click on the clock-face turns it all off(some in between mode?)
I then turn it to the start of the slow rinse cycle, and water stills comes out through the waste pipe, this time a lot slower. It is still not sucking at that time.
I then move it to right in the middle 12 o'clock position of regenerant draw, and again it sits idle, nothing happening.
I then move it to the 10 o'clock position, and it starts to throw water back into the salt brine tank.
This is when I hit the rear flappers, jolting them from closed to open, and let them click back to closed. That is when the sound changes, and it starts to suck. Before it sucks, I have at this stage got one big bag of salt in the brine tank, covered with about 2" water.
It sucks all this up, and as it gets to empty, I turn the clock face to fast refill, again returning water to the salt brine tank, letting it get to 2 inches above again, then I turn it to conditioned water.
I go inside, turn on a cold water tap in the kitchen and let the water run. It runs well, but starts off frothy, plenty of air, tasting of salt. After a couple of minutes leaving the tap running, it eventually stops frothing, all air is gone, as well as the salt.
Our inside shower and tap water has not been this clear for a long long time.
That's it??