WaterBoss Pro180 brine water amount

[MaxBlack]

Our summer cottage has one of these cabinet softeners, and while testing shows it's working, I'm surprised at how very little water is in the bottom following a regen. Guessing 6 inches, amounting to maybe 2 or 3 gallons tops.

Pro Model Selection Guide | WaterBoss

Specifications PRO 180 PROPLUS 380 Max. compensated hardness: 70 grains per gallon (gpg) 100 grains per gallon (gpg) Maximum hardness removed: 20,000 grains 40,000 grains Maximum ferrous iron reduction: 10 ppm 10 ppm Maximum pH (standard units): 7 7 Salt used per regeneration cycle: 1 to 12 lbs...

www.waterboss.com

Specs say 20 mins and 15 gallons for a cycle--dunno how much resin. Anyone here familiar with these units?

 

[Reach4]

Cabinet softeners usually use brine fill as the first cycle, before the backwash. Those will mostly be empty of liquid (down to about the middle of the air check valve. This allows use of expensive, and less efficient, potassium salt, instead of sodium salt. Most people use sodium salt, because it is cheaper and more efficient.

Most non-cabinet softeners make brine fill the last cycle, and therefore they have water most of the time. That is suitable for sodium salt, which most people use, and makes the softener ready to go if you decide to do an immediate regen for some reason.

 

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[MaxBlack]

Wow thank you Reach4! Funny, I do use Potassium Chloride in this unit.

I thought the crystals needed to sit for a time in water to properly dissolve. You're saying that if KCL sits too long in water, it dissolves too much of it or something???

 

[Bannerman]

I thought the crystals needed to sit for a time in water to properly dissolve.

When Brine Fill is the 1st stage of the regeneration cycle, there will typically follow a 1-hr or slightly longer delay to permit the Potassium Chloride or Sodium Chloride crystals to dissolve to create brine.

Sodium Chloride will dissolve at a rate of approx 3 lbs for each gallon of water entering the brine tank, regardless of the water temperature. The strength of sodium brine will remain fairly consistant even when the brine temperature changes when the prepared brine is not utilized for a week or longer as will usually occur when Brine Fill is the final stage of the regeneration cycle.

Potassium Chloride on the other hand is temperature sensitive as the amount of Potassium that will dissolve will vary depending on the temperature of the incoming water, and will further change if the brine is permitted to become warmer or cooler. To obtain consistant and predictable Potassium brine strength, programming the Brine Fill cycle to occur first followed by a short delay, the temperature of the brine will be unlikely to change much before the brine will be immediately utilized during the remainder of the regeneration cycle.

 

[MaxBlack]

Thanks for that Bannerman. It seems I need to request a manual cycle and observe what happens. I need to let the cabinet's KCL drop to where I can see the brine water.

As you may know, or at least AFAICT these cabinet softeners are hard-programmed i.e. have no "secret menus" to permit any examination or change of cycle settings...

And FWIW our water here comes very very cold out of the ground, but the cabinet is in the furnace room which is typically pretty toasty (70s) owing as much to two water heaters which have propane pilots burning 24/7.

BTW the regen time on this unit is start-to-finish some 20 minutes apparenty. Using 2.5lbs of salt at least per the spec link above.

 

[MaxBlack]

Got around to doing a manual regen today and this is what I learned, fwiw. Used my phones Stopwatch and tried to time each cycle as a "lap". In italics below is what the manufacturer called each period:

Cycle 1: First Backwash. Ninety seconds of strong flow from the discharge pipe

Cycles 2 and 3: Brine/Slow Rinse, included 4 minutes of weak flow from the discharge pipe, which did not taste at all salty so I dunno what it was doing with this. Then the sound changed (slurping, pellets moving) and for 12 minutes the discharge was extremely salty, with weak flow as before.

Cycle 4: Second Backwash. About 2.5 minutes of hard flow/discharge which did not taste at all salty to me.

Cycle 5: Brine Refill. Two minutes which started with a little flow from the discharge pipe that stopped shortly as the valve was closing I guess.

Still can't see the water in the bottom so can't be sure how much brine water was made at the end.

I probably shouldn't be surprised, but this little unit only gives us 700 gallons of soft water if I set the hardness at 10 (we have 8gpg hardness, so de-rate the setting for KCL). If I up it to 12, we get just 500 gallons. For grins I set it to 35 which is what we have at our other house (with a large capacity Culligan softener there) this little unit gives 100 gallons. It would probably have to run every day for the two of us. If I set it to its max rated 70, well the display is flashing 00s at me so presumably it could run a couple of times a day!