Newly Installed Water Softner/RO

[Greeny56]

Well, I just purchased a new Kenmore Fridge and hooked up the water connection, and I can get water out of the front but I am not getting any water into the ice maker. I know it says you need between 40-120 psi of pressure and I don't know what the pressure is once a Softener system with a RO is installed. I also don't know if the pre-filter at the RO system which supplies the water to the fridge might be causing my problem. The wife is ready to chop off my head since all the problems we have had with everything now.

Well, the fridge did make ice cubes and either Kenmore has really missed the boat by only allowing the ice maker to make small cubes or the RO is not getting enough water into the ice cube molds. My wife is resorting to using ice trays to get the ice cubes she likes. Never, ever, go buy a fridge without taking your wife. I will never hear the end of things about the fridge. :-)

[Baill]

Hey Greeny, I may have a solution for you for your ice cube problems. The problem is with the K5 units itself, not that it is a faulty unit, just a part of how they opporate. How the K5 works is that instead of using an air charged tank for the reservoir it uses a water on water tank. This tank in essence fills a bladder in the centre with RO water ready to be used and pumps pre-filtered water from the supply line in around the bladder to squeeze it out. as a result if you have 60psi for the home, you have around 60psi for the RO. What can happen is that if it is a long run to the faucet or if it is going down to a 1/4" line, the high pressure output can cause pulsing. Because of this pulsing your ice maker may not be operating properly. All that needs to be done is you need to call your Kinetico dealer and ask to them to get a K5 flow suppressor valve (part# 14585) to be installed on the line from the k5 unit to the outer bladder of the WoW tank. This valve can be fine tuned to eliminate or at least drastically reduce the pulsing, which should fix your ice maker issues.

[Greeny56]

Thanks for the info Baill. They are coming back to give my system the 90 day checkup and before they head out for my house, I will call and request that the flow suppressor valve be put on the truck for them to install.

[Greeny56]

Well, they came back for the 90 day follow-up. I reminded Mark (the technician who installed my system) that he had promised me some free salt as well as filters for installing my system backwards. True to his word, he gave me 2 bags of salt and the replacement filter for my tank system. I then purchased 3 more bags of salt and the replacement filters for the RO system. He gave me 15% off the filters and the salt. He then went and installed the 5 bags of salt for me and said that should hold me for a while being there is only 2 people in the house.

[rjh2o]

He,s not doing you any favors. He should have pulled the head off the softener too see how much resin was lost and rebedded or add resin to bring system back to full capacity. You also have resin in the water heater now and is almost impossible to get out by flushing. Make sure you check the screen on hot water to washer. You may need an in-line filter on the HOT water line after the water heater to keep resin out of dishwasher, shower heads, etc.
The Kinetico powerline is usually a clack valve now. In the past it was the fleck line of valves.
RJ

[Greeny56]

My system has worked great for the year it has been installed, but the one thing both the wife and I notice is that our toilets still seem to get a brown ring around the toilet. Not just one toilet, but all of them. I asked the tech (when he was here to drop off my free filters and salt that was owed to me due to their botched installation) and he stated to just put in the blue clorox tabs and that will take care of it. Wrong answer. Did not work. Anybody have any solutions?

[LLigetfa]

A brown ring at the water line generally means clear-water iron. The air at the surface turns the iron to rust.

[ditttohead]

Bleach in the toilet when there is iron in the water will actually make the problem slightly worse. Test for iron. Test it before and after the softener. If you have iron in very small amounts, the softener can be adjusted for it and salt with iron out, or semi regular cleaning may be a solution, or you can add an iron removal system before the softener if your iron exceeds a couple PPM. I prefer to remove the iron prior to the softener instead of using the softener for this purpose, but a softener does a fairly good job of removing iron if it set correctly and you use regular cleaning methods. The Clack Drip system works very well too.

Not scientific, but effective, use lime a way and see if the ring is easily cleaned off the procelain, this can be a fairly good indicator of iron. If it is iron, bleach will do nothing other than further solidify the stain.

[bill marsh]

There is a selonid on the refrig. that needs x amount of pressure to open so ice cubes can form. You should have been told that by the Knetico rep. Not sure if removing the refrig. filter will help but worth a try. A pump can be added after the RO storage tank to add more pressure. Should be about $100. You also should get a sediment filter if you find it in the washing machine screen.

[Greeny56]

Been a while since I have been on here so I will just update everyone to how things are going with this softener system. I am still getting the red ring around my toilets and yesterday I delivered samples of my cold and hot water to the installers. They called me today and told me that my cold water sample is clear but my hot water sample shows hardness and iron traces. My question is this. If my water is running through the softener tank before it goes through the hot water heater how can it show traces of hardness and iron, but my cold water not show it. Am I missing something? Once again I brought up the snafu of the installer putting the system lines in backwards during the initial install and getting resin through my lines so that we were getting resin in our bath water and clogging up my washer filter. They stated that when the installer returned he checked the complete system to include the resin tank. Wrong answer. I was down there the whole time he redid the lines and he never took the top off the resin tank to check it. Tech is coming out Monday and we will be going round and round about this lie the installer told. I want the whole system gone through and I should not expect a bill for this.

[ditttohead]

Hard water and iron in the hot water tank but not the cold water lines is a good indicator of a system capacity problem. The hot water tank will "tattle" if the softener runs out of capacity, it acts like a dilution tank and takes a little while to become fully soft again. The cold water will be exactly what the softener is at the moment.

If the system was installed backwards, the valve must be removed and the media inspected for loss, especially if you got any resin in the house lines. Removing the head takes a few minutes and is not a difficult item that should be debated or argued, they should simply do it.

Good luck.

[Greeny56]

Hard water and iron in the hot water tank but not the cold water lines is a good indicator of a system capacity problem. The hot water tank will "tattle" if the softener runs out of capacity, it acts like a dilution tank and takes a little while to become fully soft again. The cold water will be exactly what the softener is at the moment.

If the system was installed backwards, the valve must be removed and the media inspected for loss, especially if you got any resin in the house lines. Removing the head takes a few minutes and is not a difficult item that should be debated or argued, they should simply do it.

Good luck.

Well, the company called today and the tech being sent out is the same idiot that installed it backwards and then told the company that after he reinstalled it correctly he checked it out completely and it was good to go. I am going to light a fire under his a** when he gets here.

[ditttohead]

What color is the tank? The "natural" color tanks, you can see into them without removing the head. That is the only thing i like about the natural tanks, otherwise, they are the ugliest tanks we have.

Keep us posted, and when he removes the head, give us an accurate measurement.

In theory, the media should be 2/3 up the tank with 1/3 empty.

[Greeny56]

What color is the tank? The "natural" color tanks, you can see into them without removing the head. That is the only thing i like about the natural tanks, otherwise, they are the ugliest tanks we have.

Keep us posted, and when he removes the head, give us an accurate measurement.

In theory, the media should be 2/3 up the tank with 1/3 empty.

Tank is black in color. It is tagged as a Powerline PS 1054x M.

[Greeny56]

Tech showed up and retested the water and got the same results as previous test from last Wednesday. He removed resin tank cap and I have at least 2/3 if not a little less of media. He cleaned everything up and then reprogrammed the system to give me more capacity. Will recheck the water in about 3 weeks to see if there is any change. My wife is asking me all kinds of questions about if the resin leak we had after the initial install could cause you to have skin problems like rosacea. I have no idea but told her to contact a dermatologist.