Still seeing a bit of resin...

[dmendiol]

I am a still seeing a little bit of resin coming from the kitchen faucet. I can only think that I did not tighten the screws of the bottom basket enough. How tight should they be? I remember there was a black ball inside and I only tightened the screws so there could be some play on the ball. If I tightened the screws to the point of smashing the rubber gaskets, there would be no play. Should the ball have play?

[ditttohead]

Is that from a turbulator? If so, get rid of it, put in a standard bottom screen and a gravel bed. I am sure a few guys will argue, but... the turbulator is not worth it. If you are using your softener to remove iron "sigh..." it may help a bit but redardless, get a 40922 bottom screen, 10-15 pounds of 1/8" gravel, some 3/4" pvc pipe, and you will be much better off.

If you got resin all through your house, the resin can be a problem for a long time. It will hide in your plumbing for a while, particularly in the bottom of your water heater. Hook up a hose to the bottom of your water heater and open and close the valve repeatedly and check the water for any resin. Good luck!

[dmendiol]

Is that from a turbulator? If so, get rid of it, put in a standard bottom screen and a gravel bed. I am sure a few guys will argue, but... the turbulator is not worth it. If you are using your softener to remove iron "sigh..." it may help a bit but redardless, get a 40922 bottom screen, 10-15 pounds of 1/8" gravel, some 3/4" pvc pipe, and you will be much better off.

If you got resin all through your house, the resin can be a problem for a long time. It will hide in your plumbing for a while, particularly in the bottom of your water heater. Hook up a hose to the bottom of your water heater and open and close the valve repeatedly and check the water for any resin. Good luck!

Yes, it is from a turbulator. Which is the best and easiest way to remove the resin from the tank, so I can rebed with gravel? Unfortunately, I have two water heaters--both are located in the attic. I am just trying to keep this unit for another year or so before I buy the new one.

[ditttohead]

Again, I am waiting to here people argue this but... If yor resin is in good shape, simply remove the turbulator, install a standard manifold that is the same length as the turbultor. Be sure the manifold is level with the tank assuming it is a fleck or clack valve. Use a garden hose to force water through the mainfold if you have trouble getting it through the resin. Once it is installed, you can add the gravel to the top of the resin. As soon as you backwash the system, the medias will reclassify themselve instantly. (no arguments here please, I have done this in training seminars for years with clear vessels to prove the point. All of the resin is displaced within seconds by the gravel) Add approximately 10-15 pounds of gravel on top of the resin. You will not have resin coming through the screen ever again and you will slightly increase the systems efficiency by having better bottom distribution.

Do not buy a cheap bottom screen, only a D-190, 40922, or the heavy Clack bottom screens. Their are many Chinese bottom screens that are knockoffs of the US made units that look simlar but cost 25 cents, be sure to use only the USA made or Italy made bottom screens.

[dmendiol]

Again, I am waiting to here people argue this but... If yor resin is in good shape, simply remove the turbulator, install a standard manifold that is the same length as the turbultor. Be sure the manifold is level with the tank assuming it is a fleck or clack valve. Use a garden hose to force water through the mainfold if you have trouble getting it through the resin. Once it is installed, you can add the gravel to the top of the resin. As soon as you backwash the system, the medias will reclassify themselve instantly. (no arguments here please, I have done this in training seminars for years with clear vessels to prove the point. All of the resin is displaced within seconds by the gravel) Add approximately 10-15 pounds of gravel on top of the resin. You will not have resin coming through the screen ever again and you will slightly increase the systems efficiency by having better bottom distribution.

Do not buy a cheap bottom screen, only a D-190, 40922, or the heavy Clack bottom screens. Their are many Chinese bottom screens that are knockoffs of the US made units that look simlar but cost 25 cents, be sure to use only the USA made or Italy made bottom screens.

Prior to adding the gravel, do I remove some resin since it is about 2/3 full? Thanks.

[ditttohead]

No need to remove the resin. Simply install a new manifold, you can not use gravel with the turbulator. Then cap the manifold, and add 10 pounds of gravel on top of the resin. As soon as you put the system into backwash, the gravel will fall below the resin almost instantly. The two different medias will separate perfectly.

Good luck!

[Akpsdvan]

And with that 10lbs of gravel going to the bottom of the media tank, how much resin is going to be looking at going out the drain?

There are two camps, the people who use and like the turbo and the the people who do not use or like them.. enough said.

[ditttohead]

lol, some of the questions here are odd. Akpsdvan, do your calculations please. Assuming the gravel will displace 1/10 of a cubic foot (gravel generally weighs approximately 100 pounds per cubic foot), the additional increase in resin height of 2.1" on a 54" tank, that will have no affect on wether the resin will exit out the top of the tank during backwash. Seriously, if you dont like my comment on the turbulator, keep it to that. Unless you know your calculations, a 10" diameter tank has a .045 cu. ft. capacity per inch of height, and before someone says something absurd, the gravel height will be approximately 4", plenty enough to cover the lower distributor, the gravel displaces the resin from the domed portion of the tank which would have to be figure as a sphere, not a cylinder. The calculation for that is .9 Cu ft for the dome for a standard 10" tank.

Re:the turbulator, they are not bad, just completely overstated in their ability to remove iron or other contaminants from resin. If they worked even close to their stated ability, upscaling them to larger commercial systems would be a high priority. Obviously, nobody is going to invest in the tooling up a 1-1/2" turbulator for a market that does not exist. I have worked on enough of them to know there drawbacks and there advantages. When speaking with the engineering team who develop these, even they admit they are more of a marketing item than a functional one. That being said, I am all about marketing. I develop and sell Alkaline filtration systems, hydromagnetic water conditioning modules, ALkamag filters, and I do the marekting for our overseas office and we make wild and ridiculous claims about the health benefits of the miracle filters we sell. in the US market, we can only market to the truth so no health claims are allowed. I know marketing, and the turbulator, while it has no disadvantage other than cost and complexity, it has very little true benefit. A little citric acid in the brine tank every 6 months is the cheapest and best solution to keeping resin clean.

[Gary Slusser]

I always used a gravel underbed except with a Turbulator. I sold a fair number of softeners with a Turbulator when I had 5 ppm or more iron and I instructed the customer how to use Iron Out and how much of it every 4-6 weeks. I sold two softeners like that with SST-60 resin on up to 13 ppm of iron because the prospect wanted to try it. I haven't heard of any problems except for one customer and that was a woman that listened to her new live in boyfriend that got to not liking doing the Iron Out thing and he stopped doing it. That was about 5 years after I had sold the unit to her and her husband (they divorced a year earlier). I cleaned out the rust from the valve and she called me a few months later to tell me it was working like it had been before she went along with stopping the Iron Out. I set all those softeners for very good salt efficiency using 4gpg per ppm of iron + the hardness. And most importantly the customers were very satisfied.

BTW, there's nothing wrong with adding gravel that way, or when it is mixed with resin after dumping a tank and putting it in another tank.

[Tom Sawyer]

For many years we have been using the softener to remove small amounts of iron and it is effective provided the unit is properly maintained. (iron out in the brine tank periodically) but the other thing that I have found is that quite a lot of customers either forget or can't be bothered to do that maintenance on a regular basis. Most will keep it up for a few months and then slack off and the rest will either do it or not. So......the bed fouls and we get a call and depending on the value of the customer (yes folks, customers have value. Some more than others) we either play knight is shining armor or flaming butt hole. You can get into some pretty heated arguments as to who's fault the problem is and I see logic on both sides. From the customers point of view, "why did you sell me something that was not designed to take care of the problem" and from my point of view " I explained it to you when I sold and installed it and I went over the maintenance with you also" But regardless of your point of view, you now have either a dissatisfied or totally pissed off customer on your hands, neither of which is good for business. Word of mouth spreads pretty fast in a small town. " Hey Fred, there goes the jerk that screwed me on the water softener, don't buy from him" So are you prepared to eat the cost of a re-bed? and if you do, are you willing to do it again and again? because the iron problem is still there. So........we treat iron now and don't rely on the softener to do it. Now if you are a DIY guy, and you are ok with doing the maintenance then by all means, use your softener to treat small iron conditions, but don't come crying to me when the thing craps out on you because you forgot to clean it out periodically.

Thread and post archived for future use

[ditttohead]

Perfectly stated. Softener should not be used for iron removal, but... they can be and many dealers still do. The turbulator wont hurt, and it may help. Iron out definetly works, but who really wants to continually add methylyne phosphonic acid or similar products to their brine tank? Not to mention the inherent innefficiency with using the softener as an iron filter.

Iron removal is very regional and should be done by a local qualified technician, primarily because some areas can be made completely iron free with nothing more than Turbidex, other areas require an oxidizing agent, contact tank, and further oxidation medias. Most of the time, water dealers will start with the most extensive iron removal method (chlorine injection, contact tank, pyrolox, gac), then cut the design back to see how simple, inexpensive, and the most environmentally feasible of a solution they can come up with. I sell huge amounts of 2510 AIO valves with Nextsand as iron removal equipment. A simple cleaning of the injector assembly every 6 months seems to keep the system working perfectly. It is also very inexpensive and easy to backwash. We are still working on a 7000AIO system but... that will probably come next year.

[Gary Slusser]

From my experience the "who" are those people that want to get rid of iron with the lowest cost and also need a softener. They are people that that have no problem with doing a bit or preventive maintenance once a month or so that takes only 5 minutes.

[Tom Sawyer]

Well yes, the world is full of who's that don't want to spend the money to do things right and thanks to these folks, oil changes never get done so new cars get bought and a few more workers get to keep their jobs for awhile.

Who's are those little odd shaped people that live in Whoville and piss off the Grinch.

[ditttohead]

Tom, amazing how every response you and I make is wrong in some way.


Using softeners for Iron removal is one of the reasons we are getting regulated into oblivion. "Lets use the most innefficient, but cheapest initial cost technology available". Lets dump massive amounts of chlorides into our waste streams and ground water supplies and then wonder why the municipalities are pushing to ban water softening. Iron removal is cheap and easy and as an industry we must sell the right technologies for the problem. Not just push for the easy sale.

Why do some people have such a massive resistance to doing the right thing. These are the same people who complain about lead free solder, and low water use toilets. Regardless of how well technology has advanced to make these new ideas work better than the old way, they still swear the old ways were better.

[Tom Sawyer]

And here is a post from an active thread here that says the exact opposite and when I pointed out the hypocrisy, my post was of course deleted.

(Slusser) I'm against a disposable cartridge type prefilter for a softener because human nature being what it is, many guys won't change the cartridge until they can't power wash their butt in the shower and by then it is way past the time it should have been changed and it has starved the softener for proper backwash water flow which has been harming the resin. That is not good for a softener.