Help a new member pick out a water softener

[Varbird]

Hello Everyone,

I am new member who has been lurking for a bit, and is wondering what water softener to get.

I am on municipal/city water that has a hardness of 22 GPG. My house is a 3 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom house (2 showers) , with washing machine and dishwasher. Most of the time, the house has about 1.5-2 people in it, and occasionally maybe 3 or 4 staying over for a few days or week.

Here is the municipal water quality report: https://www.cityoflafayette.com/DocumentCenter/View/24706/2019-Water-Quality-Report-CCR

1. I have calculated my typical use case as follows:
22GPG* 150 (~75 GalPerPersonPerDay) is about 3,300 Grain per day or 23,100 Grain Per Week.

Assuming most softeners have peak efficiency around 70% of capacity, (i.e 23,100/0.70), this would suggest that I need a softener around 33,000 grain capacity.

Given that I may have people visit, and my typical use case puts me right at 33,000 grain system, would you suggest sizing up? say to a 45K grain size or something else?

2. I have also been doing a lot of research regarding valves. There seems to be a lot of companies here and there claiming that they have "the best" valves. I have decided that I'd rather play it safe, and stick to a big name like Fleck, than purchase someones in-house brand controller.

I have seen that that the Fleck 5600 SXT is a very popular model, and that there is an improved version which is either the 5800 (3/4 inch opening) or 5810 (1" opening) which can be paired with an SXT or XTR controller. I have been told that you ideally want to match the valve opening on softener to the diameter of the plumbing into the home.

This would be my first system to set up. I am not sure how easy these would be to configure? Which model would be best for me? and which controller to get?

3. I have also noticed that these Fleck 58XX systems aren't as easy to find online. I am not sure where people are buying them from or if I should buy the controller, and the tank and the resin separately, and assemble it myself? As opposed to buying a whole system from some website.

4. I have seen a lot of things about variable brining, upflow vs downflow, and different capabilities that some of these valves have. I don't know to what extent these would be of benefit to me?


Thanks so much

 

[BDTX]

I have all the same questions! I keep reading that for salt cost efficiency, it's good to bump up on the grain capacity, but I don't know how much bumping up is too much. My aunt & uncle have the Fleck 5810 and they used to live in Wisconsin where they all apparently have water softeners so I trust their research & putting that one on my radar also. Same with you though, can't find much about it online, but they said they got theirs through a local dealer.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Reach4]

1. I have calculated my typical use case as follows:
22GPG* 150 (~75 GalPerPersonPerDay) is about 3,300 Grain per day or 23,100 Grain Per Week.

Assuming most softeners have peak efficiency around 70% of capacity, (i.e 23,100/0.70), this would suggest that I need a softener around 33,000 grain capacity.

At 150 gallons per day, a 10x54 softener with 1.5 cubic ft of resin would be good. This may be called a "48000 grain" softener, but don't use that number for calculating. At 8 lbs /cuft of salt, you would go 9 to 10 days between regen. You would set the capacity to 36000. This is better softening than 6 lb/cuft.

At 6 lbs /cuft of salt, you would go 9 to 10 days between regen. You would set the capacity to 30000 and would go about 8 days per regen. This is more salt-saving.

Bottom line, a 1.5 cubic ft softener with 10% crosslinked resin fits your needs. For your visitors, you could trigger an early regen so that the capacity is full when the visitors arrive.