Help! - Consuming Too Much Salt - Clack WS1C - 2.0cu - 48K

[Jason1975]

Hello,

My water softener seems to be consuming about 40 pounds of salt per week. I’d like to get your recommended settings for my softener based on the following information.

Household
-----
5 bathroom house.
Family of 4.
Two teenage boys.
We rarely have two showers running at the same time, but it happens occasionally.
I’ve been watching our water consumption and it’s averaging around 300 gallons per day total.

Softener
-----
2.0 cubic foot
48,000 grain capacity
Tank is 53" tall x 13" diameter.
Clack WS1C valve

Water Quality (see attached water test report)
-----
Private well
36 grains hardness
1.56 mg/l iron
no manganese

Softener Settings
-----
Here’s the settings the install company set:
p-code 23
48k capacity
19lbs salt
55 hardness

My wife and I like our water super soft… but the salt consumption is too much to handle. Your recommendations are welcomed.

Thanks.
Jason

 

[Jason1975]

Hello,

My water softener seems to be consuming about 40 pounds of salt per week. I’d like to get your recommended settings for my softener based on the following information.

Household
-----
5 bathroom house.
Family of 4.
Two teenage boys.
We rarely have two showers running at the same time, but it happens occasionally.
I’ve been watching our water consumption and it’s averaging around 300 gallons per day total.

Softener
-----
2.0 cubic foot
48,000 grain capacity
Clack WS1C valve

Water Quality
-----
Private well
36 grains hardness
1.56 mg/l iron

Softener Settings
-----
Here’s the settings the install company set:
p-code 23
48k capacity
19lbs salt
55 hardness

My wife and I like our water super soft… but the salt consumption is too much to handle. Your recommendations are welcomed.

Thanks.
Jason

I've been reading a bunch of previous threads. 2.0 cu3 of resin and 48,000 grain seem to conflict, yes? The 4-year old sales invoice from the water conditioning company says the unit is 2.0 cu ft and 48,000 grains capacity. I called them yesterday to confirm, which they did. The tank is 53" tall x 13" diameter.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Jason1975]

Can anyone help me with this? I've read all the threads on this topic, but there aren't too many posts for Clack 2.0cuft softeners. Thanks!

 

[Reach4]

A 13" x 54" tank would typically be using 2.50 cu. ft. of resin. A 12x52 inch tank would typically have 2 cuft of resin.

2 cuft of resin would be called a 64,000 grain softener in marketing terms, and if you regenerated with 16 lbs of salt, you should get about 48000 grains of actual softening.

2.5 cuft regenerated with 19 pounds of salt should give about 59000 grains of softening.

Treat each mg/L of iron as 5 added grains of hardness. Plus there is a high hardness compensation which means you actually need more salt than you would think. So you actually get less grains of softening per pound of salt. http://www.terrylove.com/forums/ind...0-sxt-programming-settings.60651/#post-450189 has some info on high hardness compensation.

Run this thru your spreadsheet and let us know what you get to.

Figure about 60 gallons of water per person per day.

 

[Bannerman]

2 ft3 resin possesses a total of 64,000 grains hardness removal capacity, but regenerating 64K capacity would require 40 lbs salt, which would be wasteful and highly inefficient. (64,000 gr / 40 lbs = 1,600 gr per lb efficiency)

To significantly reduce salt consumption and improve efficiency, the usual recommended Capacity setting will be 48K as that amount of usable Capacity in 2 ft3 resin, maybe regenerated using only 16 lbs salt. (48,000 gr / 16 lbs = 3,000 gr per lb efficiency).

Your current 48,000 capacity / 55 gpg hardness setting, will provide maximum 872 gallons soft water per cycle when 100% of the Reserve Capacity is consumed.

872 gallons / 300 gal/day = 2.9 days capacity. Because a single tank softener is normally programmed to regenerate at a specific time during the night when little/no soft water will be consumed, based on your data, your softener will then likely undergo regeneration every 2 nights, each time consuming 19 lbs salt as per the current salt setting.

You could reduce the salt dose to 16 lbs as that will reduce the amount of salt consumed per cycle, but will not change the regeneration frequency.

If your tank size is actually 13" diameter, you should be able to install an additional 0.5 ft3 resin, which would allow the usable Capacity setting to be increased to 60,000 grains when regenerated with 20 lbs salt.

60,000 / 55 gpg = 1090 gallons
1090 gals / 300 gals/day = >3 days, so 3 days max between each Regen cycle.

Removing iron with a softener is not an efficient method. Not only is the 1.56 ppm iron requiring the hardness setting to be increased by 8 gpg, but removal of iron from the resin will require increased ongoing maintenance using a mild acid resin cleaner. Suitable acid cleaners include Super Iron Out, ResCare or Citric acid. When not regularly removed, iron will continue to accumulate on the resin bead's surface leading to iron fouling, which will signify the impairment of the resin's ability to remove hardness ions.

 

[Jason1975]

Thank you! This is extremely helpful. I changed the salt to 16lbs and reduced the hardness from 55 to 52 = 1.2 x (36 + (1.5 x 5) to account for iron and high hardness compensation. Our softener regenerates based on demand/flow. I'll run it for a few weeks and check for hardness leakage when we get to a point where we're using reserve capacity.

Thanks again.