Fleck 5810SXT brine draw issue

[Dzimm27]

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

 

[Bannerman]

During the Brine Fill phase of regeneration, does water now enter the brine tank through the brine line? If so, can you see any water leakage from the brine line or fittings? To temporarily raise the pressure in the brine line during Brine Fill, lift up on the safety float within the brine well inside the brine tank.

I suspect the brine line or a fitting may have cracked due to ice expansion. A crack could be so small so as to allow air to enter during brine draw, but not large enough for water leakage to be observed. Any air leakage will prevent brine from being drawn from the brine tank. Raising the safety float will stop the incoming flow so the increased pressure in the brine line may cause a leak to become apparent.

 

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[Dzimm27]

During the Brine Fill phase of regeneration, does water now enter the brine tank through the brine line? If so, can you see any water leakage from the brine line or fittings? To temporarily raise the pressure in the brine line during Brine Fill, lift up on the safety float within the brine well inside the brine tank.

I suspect the brine line or a fitting may have cracked due to ice expansion. A crack could be so small so as to allow air to enter during brine draw, but not large enough for water leakage to be observed. Any air leakage will prevent brine from being drawn from the brine tank. In raising the pressure in the brine line during brine fill, a leak may become apparent.

Thanks for the reply @Bannerman! Well, initially the water spewing out the side of the valve at the brine tube fitting made me assume it was stuck in brine fill, but at that point, GFCI was tripped and power was out to the valve heads. In recollection the water level in the tank had dropped some on that initial test but I will be honest I didn’t pay enough attention to state anything definitively about that.

On the test today I only paid attention to brine draw, not the subsequent fill. That said I just went out and checked and while the water level did not drop during brine draw it DID raise in level by the finish of the overall cycle so I can only presume the brine fill DID complete successfully.

My mind then DOES follow your logic that something cracked during freeze expansion that is now breaking suction for the brine draw...BUT I did not feel any suction at the valve head with my finger when it was in brine draw. I was expecting a vacuum like feel. Is that to be expected?

I will do some suction tests on the line (manual!) to confirm brine can be drawn from the tank. Since the seal was broken for brine fill and was spewing water before I now question whether I truly have that resolved. If there is a suction issue that is the suspect joint so far I suppose.

 

[Bannerman]

BUT I did not feel any suction at the valve head with my finger when it was in brine draw. I was expecting a vacuum like feel. Is that to be expected?

You beat me to the next step.

Before you held your finger over the brine line connection opening, did you first remove all removable fittings from the valve body? If not, a source of potential leakage could be a remaining fitting.

As there is no vacuum at the valve head, normally, we would recommend removing the injector to clean it, but because everything was working properly prior to the freeze and because the valve head was the location where the brine line broke free, inspect the valve body around the brine line connection to look for a potential crack in the valve body. If some shaving cream is placed around the brine port opening while your finger is placed over the opening during Brine Draw, you may see some shaving cream being drawn in if there is a crack.

 

[Dzimm27]

You beat me to the next step.

Before you held your finger over the brine line connection opening, did you first remove all removable fittings from the valve body? If not, a source of potential leakage could be a remaining fitting.

I pulled the lock pin from the side and pulled out the fitting from the valve head. This included the compression fitting for the brine line behind that. I am not familiar enough to know where the injector is but will look that up. Will also go back and look at the o ring on that fitting in case that is not making a seal or needs some lube.

 

[Dzimm27]

Checked on this further today. Manual suction works on the brine line from the fitting when removed from the valve head (yrch!), so that left me with suction loss either at that joint or further into the valve head or venturi nozzle. I put some food safe lube I have for keg fittings on the o ring and sealed it back up and gave it a run. It didn’t look like it was pulling brine and I heard a fair amount of air noises (likely the venturi action but not sure), but seeing as I have a 60min brine draw cycle I set a timer to come back after 50 minutes and the water level was now below the salt pellets where I couldn’t see it, so brine draw is working. No visible cracks anywhere nor could I detect any vacuum leaks. I also went to a test brine fill and confirmed lo leaks at the fitting.

If I had to guess, when it was spewing water locked in brine fill initially, I may not have gotten the compression fitting back in as well as I should have. Fixing that or the o ring lube must have resolved it. I will keep an eye on it the next few cycles.

Thank you!

 

[Bannerman]

Brine Draw is usually very slow and is not in proportion to the sounds created.

The injector functions as a venturi so a slow stream of rinse water flowing through the injector, will cause suction on the brine connection. The correct amount of brine in the brine tank will be typically transferred to the media tank within approx 15-minutes of the 60-minute Brine Draw cycle, so the remaining ~45-minutes will cause rinse water to continue flowing through the injector to further push brine down through the media bed and to slowly rinse the media.

Because there is an 'air check valve' located at the bottom of the brine tank, that valve will close once the remaining brine lowers to a specific height to prevent air from being drawn into the media tank during the remaining 45-minute slow-rinse phase of Brine Draw.

Glad that everything is now working and there was no damage.