Recommendations for system

Gary Slusser said:

Is that 2400 gals what is reset on the contrrol at the end of a regeernation or is the figure higher between regenerations? IMO unless you have a large family, and if you do, a 1/5 cuft is probably too small because 2400 gals sounds way too many and would mean you are regenerating only every few weeks but...

Is the brown water happening right after the regeneration at 2AM that morning?

What is your programing for the softener; what gpg of hardness and di you add in for the iron and manganese, what K of capacity, how many people, how many lbs of salt, how many gallons between regenerations?

Click to expand...

I agree with Gary on this one. If you are using your softener for any iron removal, a frequent regeneration should be done. I would also recommend not doing a low salting either, in order to remove the iron from resin, a lot more salt is required.

You can try a few simple ideas. Use a res-up feeder, this is simple, cheap, and fairly effective. Order the double backwash cam for the 5600sxt, and program the valve for double backwash, set the second backwash and the final rinse for 10 minutes each. This will use more water, but will keep the resin cleaner. Or, just program your valve as it is now with a longer backwash, and longer fast rinse time to see if this lessens the problem.

http://www.freshwatersystems.com/p-6168-res-up-liquid-resin-cleaner-feeder.aspx

OK here are my present settings on the 5600 SXT:

DF / GAL
VT/DF 1b
CT/FD
NT/1
C / 48 1 1/2 cu ft unit purchased
H /18 I changed it from 16 where it was before. 277 PPM hardness + .41 PPM iron + .12 PPM mang Is 18 correct?
SF / 20
DO / 6 I changed from a prior settting of 10 tonight
RT / 2:00
BW / 10
BD / 60
RR /10
BF / 12

We currently have three adults living at the house with a fourth joining us soon.


Learning a bit more, the 2400 shown on the meter was the gallons to the next regen. Tonight it showed a little over 2000 and then when I reprogrammed it says 2130 til next regen. I wonder if the brown water we have seen was the morning after a regen cycle?

What do you all think?

From your figures, you need to click on the link in my signature and use the info there to get a better grip on how you should program your softener and more importantly, why. Print the page and save it in your manual.

I.E. your 18 gpg of compensated hardness (it's not correct). You use 4 times the iron and twice the manganese and call each gpg. Then you add each gpg to the gpg you get by dividing the 277 ppm of hardness to convert ppm to gpg and you round up to the next whole number (i.e. .41*4 = 2 gpg, then manganese, then add them to your hardness and round the result to the next higher whole number) and that is your compensated hardness in GPG.

Then there is that 12 for brine refill. Is that 12 (minutes) at .5 gpm/1.5lbs per minute or what?

IOWs, that's why I asked you how many lbs of salt, not minutes. Unless you provide all the info so the minutes can be converted to lbs there's no way for anyone, including you, to know how many lbs.

About the only thing I see wrong is that would have used 19 instead of 18 for your hardness calculation. Assuming 3 ppl using about 60 GPPPD, you will regen every 7 days if you use 6 lbs of salt per regen, and about the same if you switch to 4 people using 8 lbs per cu ft. (preferred since you are using the softener to remove iron) I wouldn't set your DO to less than the calculated metered regen, but that's just me... The way I have mine setup, I let the meter regen whenever it wants to, and set my DO for something like 4-5 days later, in case I am out of town or something, and want to freshen the resin bed.

There are a few problems but... Adjust for compensated hardness as Gary stated, and use this cheat sheet for the rest. Be sure your 5600SXT has a .5 BLFC. You can tell by looking on the valve where the brine line attaches to the controller. it will have a black sticker with silver printing stating the flow control. The sticker color tells us what it is without having to read the tiny printing on the sticker. black = .5, red = 1, blue = .25,

Your capacity should be set to 36, not 48 assuming you are going to use 8 pounds of salt per cu. ft. I would not recommend using any less salt since you are using your system for iron removal. I would also recommend regular use of IO or system saver salt, or the Resup feeder system.

Thanks for the constructive advice.

I'm struggling with how you program the lbs of salt per ft3 each regen as I followed the programming guide supplied by Ohio Pure Water to get my settings. I thought the unit size at 48K was the correct setting. I then reset it to 36K but after more reading that I need to cut the number of days between cycles have brought it down to 30,000 I read through Gary's pages but don't see how to set the lbs of salt. Is it based on the brine draw time now set at 60 minutes?

Here are my current settings

C / 30
H /19
SF / 20
DO / 10
RT / 2:00
BW / 10 min
BD / 60 min
RR /10 min
BF / 10 min

These settings give me about 1350 gallons until the next regen. With 4 people @60 gal /day, that should be every 5-6 days. Still don't know if the salt dose is correct though.

woodguy00 said:

Thanks for the constructive advice.

I'm struggling with how you program the lbs of salt per ft3 each regen as I followed the programming guide supplied by Ohio Pure Water to get my settings. I thought the unit size at 48K was the correct setting. I then reset it to 36K but after more reading that I need to cut the number of days between cycles have brought it down to 30,000 I read through Gary's pages but don't see how to set the lbs of salt. Is it based on the brine draw time now set at 60 minutes?

Here are my current settings

C / 30
H /19
SF / 20
DO / 10
RT / 2:00
BW / 10 min
BD / 60 min
RR /10 min
BF / 10 min

These settings give me about 1350 gallons until the next regen. With 4 people @60 gal /day, that should be every 5-6 days. Still don't know if the salt dose is correct though.

Click to expand...

BF is the time setting for how many minutes water flows to the brine tank. Depending on the brine refill flow control size. Look at the valve near where the brine line connects to the valve, you will see a sticker that is either black, blue, or red. Read the sticker, it will tell you how much water is being refilled and therby how much salt is being used per regeneration.

Let us know what color the sticker is near the brine line on the valve and what it says.

Thanks Dittohead - sorry i missed the question in your earlier post.

I have the black sticker with silver print. It says .5

woodguy00 said:

Thanks Dittohead - sorry i missed the question in your earlier post.

I have the black sticker with silver print. It says .5

Click to expand...

That means you get .5 gpm into the brine tank to dissolve salt.

You get 3 lbs dissolved into each gallon of water so... .5 gpm or 1.5 lbs of dissolved salt per minute.

With a BLFC of .5 set to 10 minutes, you will have 5 gallons of water in the tank, and the salt will dissolve 3 lbs per gallon, or 15 lbs. With a 1.5 cu ft softener, your current salt setting is 10 lbs per cu ft.

OK, I think I'm finally getting it! Thanks for everyone's help.

I will set my BF to 8 minutes for a 8 lbs/ cu ft salt dose. Does the 30K capacity setting for a 5-6 day regen cycle make sense for my brown water issue? Do any other setting look problematic?

8 lbs is 36K with a 1.5 cu ft. And guessing 4 people use 60 gals/day, you will go thru about 31,920 grains in 6 days, with reserve included. So well within the 36K.