I am in Fort Worth, Texas and was part of the recent power outage/freeze debacle. We made our pretty good as we have no pipe bursts we have found s of yet in spite of being without water for a while due to frozen pipes. Out softener runs with a Fleck 5810SXT and power came back on when there may have been (hard to say for sure, but quite possibly) frozen water in the valve head. When it powers on there has always been a pretty loud “chunk-cachunk-chunk-cachunk” sequence and so I know it cycles through valve positions and may have suffered damage.
The first sign of trouble was when I was running it through a test cycle and the wife called out to alert to the sound of running water. The port to the brine draw/fill line was spewing water all over the place, dousing the wall and the electrical outlet, tripping GFCI. I later found that the screw down compression fitting three was loose (probably always, but just broke seal due to ice expansion?) and re-tightened this to fix that. Ran it through another test cycle and all seemed good. It looked like it was drawing brine (although I didn’t watch it for more than 30 seconds and I was likely incorrect.
Today I ran it through another test regen cycle and noted each step “sounded” fine except the brine draw did not pull liquid from the tank. I even removed the brine tube fitting at the valve head and stuck my finger in there to confirm there was no suction. While I can’t confirm just by sound that all of the other functions are working right, they do all sound like water is flowing, whatever that tells us.
What can I do here? Are there additional tests I can try? Is there a Venturi nozzle fitting I can replace or is the valve head toast?
@ditttohead if you see this, I am sure this is beyond any warranty but am open to buy whatever is needed here or a new valve if needed
The first sign of trouble was when I was running it through a test cycle and the wife called out to alert to the sound of running water. The port to the brine draw/fill line was spewing water all over the place, dousing the wall and the electrical outlet, tripping GFCI. I later found that the screw down compression fitting three was loose (probably always, but just broke seal due to ice expansion?) and re-tightened this to fix that. Ran it through another test cycle and all seemed good. It looked like it was drawing brine (although I didn’t watch it for more than 30 seconds and I was likely incorrect.
Today I ran it through another test regen cycle and noted each step “sounded” fine except the brine draw did not pull liquid from the tank. I even removed the brine tube fitting at the valve head and stuck my finger in there to confirm there was no suction. While I can’t confirm just by sound that all of the other functions are working right, they do all sound like water is flowing, whatever that tells us.
What can I do here? Are there additional tests I can try? Is there a Venturi nozzle fitting I can replace or is the valve head toast?
@ditttohead if you see this, I am sure this is beyond any warranty but am open to buy whatever is needed here or a new valve if needed
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