Frequency of regeneration

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TWEAK

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"the cam", there is no cam, it is actually the direction of the flow of brine water through the resin bed. Standard is down (flow) through the bed.

The amount of water in the brine tank is dictated by the salt dose and not important and it will be what it is based on your Refill time and the height of the salt grid, and it doesn't have to be above the grid as long as water can get into the cup shaped legs of the grid. They usually have a hole in the bottom.


Pre refill or Refill first means add the water for the salt dose lbs at the beginning of a regeneration and then wait for a period of time for the salt to dissolve and then use it instead of at the end of a regeneration where it sits there until the next regeneration. Pre Refill means the brine will be used in the slow rinse/brine draw position and there will only be a couple inches of water in the salt tank between regenerations.

The reason you saw the water level increase is because the valve added your 6 gallons of brine makeup water to what was already in the tank. During the next regeneration it will be sucked out and none added until next week etc..


It doesn't matter how much water is in the salt tank.

With one person at 60 gals/day times 23 gpg = 1380*8 days = 11040 rounded to 12K, you need to set the salt dose to 4 lbs. Four lbs at the rate of .5 gpm or 1.5 lbs/minute is 3 minutes of Fill time.

Format: gallons (U--1)
Regenerant Flow: downflow fill first (dFFF)
Regeneration Type: meter delayed (7--3)
System Capacity: 12000 grains/gallon (C-12)
Feed water hardness: 23 grains/gallon (H-23)
Regeneration time: 2 am (2:00)
Regeneration day override: 8 days (A--8)
Regeneration Cycle Step Programming:
** step 1 - refill: 4 minutes (1--4)
** step 2 - brine making: 120 minutes (2--120)
** step 3 - backwash: 6 minutes (3--6)
** step 4 - brine draw: 45 minutes (4--45)
** step 5 - 2nd backwash: 5 minutes (5 --5)
** step 6 - rapid rinse: 5 minutes (6--5)

Safety factor: 15% (cF 15)

That gets you 443 gals and 7 days with better than a 24 hr reserve and a calendar override of 8 days and great salt and water efficiency and keeps the salt tank cleaner than Post Refill would.

DO NOT let it run out of salt. If you do you do 2 manual regens one right after teh other with no water use during or between and you do them at 22.5 lbs of salt and then when done, change the salt dose back to 4 lbs.

Super! I will edit the program right now.

edit - new question: Gary, I notice you said 3 minutes would provide a 4 pound salt dose but you specified a fill time of 4 minutes not 3 minutes. Typo or am I looking at this wrong??

Sure appreciate all the support. I feel that I have a much better understanding of how this works thanks to this carefully reading through yours and akpsdvan's comments. Too bad the manufacturer doesn't put all this information in the instructions they ship with the units! I wonder how many folks out there have mis-programmed controllers?
 
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Gary Slusser

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edit - new question: Gary, I notice you said 3 minutes would provide a 4 pound salt dose but you specified a fill time of 4 minutes not 3 minutes. Typo or am I looking at this wrong??

Too bad the manufacturer doesn't put all this information in the instructions they ship with the units! I wonder how many folks out there have mis-programmed controllers?
Yes I have a mental block with figuring minutes on Fleck and then I typo it...... With a Clack I simply put in the actual lbs and the computer gets right on down to tenths of a minute.

The number of minutes depend on what BLFC you have, and most common is .5 gpm 1.5 lb/minute. So for four lbs on a Fleck, you can't set it to get only 4 lbs., so you have to go higher because you can't set less than a minute of refill time. Three minutes * 1.5 lbs per minute = 4.5 lbs, set it for 3 minutes.
 

Akpsdvan

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DF is what I would use if I was programing it.. it fills the brine tank last and there is no wait time between filling the brine tank and then starting the brine draw ,, all that adds up, I find that over the next few days after a cleaning cycle is better in getting the salt water up to the 26-27% and ready for the next cleaning.
It is better for water to be over the salt table.. salt fills in the 3 or 4 cups and will take much longer in getting the 26-27% salt water made up..
 

Gary Slusser

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DF is what I would use if I was programing it.. it fills the brine tank last and there is no wait time between filling the brine tank and then starting the brine draw ,, all that adds up, I find that over the next few days after a cleaning cycle is better in getting the salt water up to the 26-27% and ready for the next cleaning.
It is better for water to be over the salt table.. salt fills in the 3 or 4 cups and will take much longer in getting the 26-27% salt water made up..
The wait time happens before a regeneration starts, so there is no wasted time.

With 2 hrs you get the 26-27% and I've had a scientist that listened to what you are saying so he bought a salometer and tested each regeneration for three months for both pre and post refill. There is very little difference and testing the drain water for 8-13% was right on. Maybe with colder temps it wouldn't work as well but in the lower 48, I've been doing it this way for 1384 customers over the last 6.4 yrs with no problems.

He sent me a graph if you want to see it. He also posted it on the old Purolite forum.

Pre refill keeps the salt tank clean and prevents salt bridging plus it's easy to tell there is a brine problem by seeing more than 2-3" of water in the salt tank at any time between regenerations.
 

Akpsdvan

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Salt bridging is an odd duck in that I have seen it happen almost like clock work on some and never on others that one would think that it would happen...
Some brine tanks been to be cleaned about every 2 years because of either Iron build up of the sluge build up from pellet salt with the binder... I have been using extra course now for 20 years with only iron build up on some but never the sluge from the binder..
If extra course does bridge a mop handle will break that bridge or a good mule kick on the out side of the brine tank will do the trick.
The wait time is part of the cleaning cycle... once the unit enters the cleaning cycle untreated water is going into the house, and if there is iron of any great level that can be a challenge later in the day should any good water usage take place in the time frame.
One is looking to have the single unit on as little down time as possible.
Not all of the water in the states or lower 48 is warm, some in the northern part of the country comes close to the temp that we have around here.
With a unit using a time refill from the valve and the safety float assembly as the back up for stopping water into the brine tank, if the float comes in contact with the water then there is a challenge with the injector / screen or the brine piston not seating ...

And if this has been working for my 20 years and I learned from people that where in the business long before I started ... why change some thing that works?
 

Bob999

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I prefer post fill--it works well in all water temperatures so why mess with success.

I see no evidence or rationale for the claimed benefit of keeping the salt tank cleaner with pre fill. I also have seen no data that supports the claim that it reduces salt bridging and I think the claim is counter intuitive because water is present in the brine tank at all times even with pre fill.

The one potential benefit I see for prefill is to the service person--the brine tank will typically have less brine in it when a service call is made and this may make service easier in some circumstances.
 

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I prefer post fill--it works well in all water temperatures so why mess with success.

I see no evidence or rationale for the claimed benefit of keeping the salt tank cleaner with pre fill. I also have seen no data that supports the claim that it reduces salt bridging and I think the claim is counter intuitive because water is present in the brine tank at all times even with pre fill.

The one potential benefit I see for prefill is to the service person--the brine tank will typically have less brine in it when a service call is made and this may make service easier in some circumstances.

It is really interesting to get all the expert opinions on this. But since you guys don't agree on the pre- v. post-fill, it leaves the question open.

The default on the Fleck 7000 valve is post-fill. I've had this particular softener working for a couple of years on the factory default settings. The brine tank looks very clean... but then again maybe the buildup Gary is talking about takes longer to form. So my experience may not be too helpful on that matter.

I did just change to pre-fill a few days ago. But based on this discussion, I think I will dump a bucket of clean water into the brine tank to get the water level above the table level and change back to post-fill -- Gary, please don't be upset at this, I am doing it strictly for for experimental purposes! After another year if the brine tanks starts to look grimy or if I see salt bridge problems, then I will clean it out and try pre-fill. I always use the same salt - the pellet stuff they sell at Costco (I get it there for convenience - not really to save the one dollar price difference). Maybe I will learn something from this experiment. If so I will come back to this thread and let you guys know what happened.

Perhaps pre- v. post- is a minor issue? If one was clearly better than the other, I wonder why Fleck would offer both options. In fact.... why do they???

By the way, I emailed Pentair and asked them about the fill rate on my valve - 0.5 gpm or 0.25 gpm or ??? No response. I'm actually somewhat disappointed that they wouldn't respond to a customer inquiry. Anyone know the correct fill rate for the 7000SXT valve? Clearly it has a major impact on the salt dose. If the info isn't available, I have a bucket with measuring lines on it... guess I could put the fill tube in a bucket and determine how much water comes out in 3 minutes.

Thanks again for all the support!! I've learned a lot.
 

Akpsdvan

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If you have the manual for the 7000, then on page 20 parts 13-9 .. the brine fitting has in the base a little rubber washer with a hole, that is the flow control. Be very careful, remove and look with a good light and one should find on it .25gpm.... .50gpm... that is how many gallons per minute will go to the brine tank.
Let us know if you need the link for the manual.
 

TWEAK

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If you have the manual for the 7000, then on page 20 parts 13-9 .. the brine fitting has in the base a little rubber washer with a hole, that is the flow control. Be very careful, remove and look with a good light and one should find on it .25gpm.... .50gpm... that is how many gallons per minute will go to the brine tank.
Let us know if you need the link for the manual.

Yes I do have that manual. I will get my light and see if I can find the marking. I didn't think to look at the actual valve - I just scoured the manual and pentaire website. Thanks yet again for all the effort you've spent to help me!
 

Akpsdvan

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There is no set flow rate, each valve ends up getting a different control depending on the size of the tank that it is going onto.
Most of the time it is .25 or .50 but with this valve able to go on larger systems it can take up to the 1.0gpm.
The 5600 or the 2510 and some of the others had a lable on the injector or brine valve assembly. I have a 7000 that is on the shelf but have not looked to see what is on it..
 

Bob999

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Most valves are shipped with a sticker on the valve body that lists the size of the brine line flow control installed in the valve. Yours may or may not have the sticker--and of course there is always the possibility that if there is a sticker it is not correct for the actual flow control that is installed.

The most commonly used brine line flow control is 0.5 gpm.
 

Gary Slusser

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Yes I do have that manual. I will get my light and see if I can find the marking. I didn't think to look at the actual valve - I just scoured the manual and pentaire website. Thanks yet again for all the effort you've spent to help me!
That info is not in a manual because it is specific to each valve based on the size of the softener etc. etc. so teh valve is ordered from the manufacturer .

You say you are confused about pre and post refill. The fact is that I am the only one here that has used it and a couple guys here just love to disagree with most everything I say. One is a dealer and the other is an owner of a softener etc..

With pre refill you don't have salt sitting in the water, except that in the legs of the grid, because it is below the grid except after refill during the first backwash and then sucked down below the grid during brining.

Here is a link to a comparison of pre and post refill done by a customer of mine in 2004. There is very little difference between the two and both provide more than the minimum saturation and brine strength.
http://home.pacbell.net/seliger/softener.htm
 

Akpsdvan

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And round and round it is going to go.

Both have uses or in another word.. pros and cons

When a unit does a filling of the brine tank at the start of a cleaning cycle is that unit on bypass ? is untreated water getting passed the unit and into the house? and while it waits for the 60+ minutes is that unit letting untreated water past and into the house?
 

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You say you are confused about pre and post refill. The fact is that I am the only one here that has used it and a couple guys here just love to disagree with most everything I say. One is a dealer and the other is an owner of a softener etc..

Gary, you are not correct when you assert that you are "the only one here that has used it" (referring to pre and post fill on a softener). You simply have no way of knowing everything that others who post here have or have not done and you should, in my opinion, refrain from making statements that you cannot support.
 
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Gary Slusser

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And round and round it is going to go.

Both have uses or in another word.. pros and cons
So that this doesn't go round and round as you say, and since I've proved one of your stated cons of pre refill isn't right, please list the cons of both pre and post refill.

When a unit does a filling of the brine tank at the start of a cleaning cycle is that unit on bypass ? is untreated water getting passed the unit and into the house? and while it waits for the 60+ minutes is that unit letting untreated water past and into the house?
You've previously said it was/would.

Now you're asking if it is/will.... which seems to say you don't know if it is/will. So which is it, do you know or don't you know?

Hint; some big box store brands use pre refill, you service or have serviced many of them, how many have you heard of that causing hard water by pass?

As the OP asked you and IIRC you haven't answered, why would manufacturers like Fleck and Clack have it if it causes the problems you think it does? Or, since you say there are pros to pre refill but disagree with mine, what are your pros of pre refill?

BTW, the 60+ minutes wait should be 120 minutes (2 hrs), 1 hr is not long enough in many cases.
 

Gary Slusser

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Gary, you are not correct when you assert that you are "the only one here that has used it" (referring to pre and post fill on a softener). You simply have no way of knowing everything that others who post here have or have not done and you should, in my opinion, refrain from making statements that you cannot support.
If I'm wrong about your experience being simply a guy with a softener Bob, it's no ones fault but your own for not stating your experience in water treatment as a dealer etc..

BTW, do you agree with AKpsdvan that both pre and post refill have pros and cons? If so, since you disagree with my list, list what you think they are.
 

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If I'm wrong about your experience being simply a guy with a softener Bob, it's no ones fault but your own for not stating your experience in water treatment as a dealer etc..

No Gary it is your fault, and your fault alone when you make up incorrect information about other posters.

Grow up and stop behaving like a spoiled teenager who has been caught his hand in the cookie jar.
 

TWEAK

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Whoa, gentlemen!!

Bottom line, you're all very generous guys for taking your valuable time to explain all this. The info from all of you has helped tremendously.
 

Akpsdvan

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Glad that you now have a better understanding of your system and the programing of it.
 
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