Fleck 7000 Variable Brining - Awesome?

[ByteMe]

From Service manual;

Meter Delayed - Variable Brining
— The control regenerates on the day that the available volume of softened water drops to or below the
reserve volume. Regeneration starts at the set Regeneration Time. With the variable brining option
activated, the time setting for Cycle 1 is automatically calculated based on the volume of treated water
at the time of regeneration. Cycle time 1 will not exceed the original time setting and is never less than
1 minute.

I imagine this would mostly be useful with high capacity amounts with large reserves. Anyone have experience with this. I should setup a spreadsheet to play with the numbers. This is figuring the meter just uses a capacity/salt lbs ratio for when it would adjust the salt time down. Or does this work a different way?

*edit* What is the advantage or disadvantage of a second backwash?

[ditttohead]

Variable brining is useful for severaly undersized systems. Commercial applications with single tanks is the most common or residential with very hard water and a small system. There are certain issues that arise with variable brining. Watts has a modified 7000 valve that has worked fairly well (better than most) for variable brining. If a system is sized correctly, it should regenerate weekly or less. At that efficiency, variable brining does not come into play.

Second backwash... the primary advantage is it eliminates the need for upflow brining and the unique problems upflow brining creates. Second backwash is especially useful when very low salt settings are used, it gives the end user a higher quality of softened water with only a small amount of backwash water. Second backwash is standard on every 5600 electromechanical valve, it was originally considered a design flaw, now it is a "feature".

[Tom Sawyer]

I think I can count on one hand the number of times I have used variable brining.

[ditttohead]

Agreed. It is more marketing than real world. I have some customers who have used it to get themselves out of a problem in commercial applications. Recently a customer installed a 2 cu. ft single tank softener to a large restaurant, hot side only. The restaurant was using approximately 1200 gallons per day (range from 600-1800), with a hardness of 24 grains, Even with a high reserve/safety factor, it was not working for obvious reasons. The quick fix was to convert it to variable brining, the right fix would have been to use a 9100 twin alternating valve in the first place.

[Gary Slusser]

Sounds to me like your training isn't taking hold very well.

Maybe more time on site and going out in the field with them might help. I'm sure it would help their customers but...

Would you care to explain to the uninformed here how switching to variable brining solves the problem of a too small softener? Maybe starting with an explanation of variable bring.

And why a correctly sized two tank softener wouldn't work as well as the twin tank you mention.

[ditttohead]

Wow, not even sure how to interpret that one. The discussion was a technical one, not something I would try to explain to you.

It comes down to efficiencies, capacities, reserves, and they work in a system that is undersized. It is obvious you have very little experience outside of trollong, so I will let you get back to that.

I think variable brining can be fixed with duct tape.