Question on Fleck 7000 water softener 64k grin

[ditttohead]

the 8 pound salt setting will give you very good quality, but the water wont be real soft for a few weeks, depending on how long you were on hard water. The soft scale buildup will quickly be removed by the soft water, but it will also raise the hardness by a few ppm, enough to take away the "slippery" feel for a little while.

Congrats on the new system!

[silversaver]

Thanks Dittohead,

I just check the brine tank and found the water were covering the 3 bags of 40lbs salt. Is that look right?



I also found this on the brine well cap. It looks like part of brine fitting assembly were it should be install on the end of brine line tubing. Is that the reason why there are so much water in brine tank?

[ditttohead]

That is a tube insert. Most tanks come with one in the tube and an extra on the cap in case it gets lost. We sell those in 1000 min. order qty's, every service guy usually has those in bulk on their service truck, in their pockets, in the glove box, on the floor board... It is used to reinforce the tube connection for Jaco or compression style fittings. I would take it off and throw it in a drawer. You will know if the system is working properly if it draws brine during the brine and rinse cycle. your brine tank should have around 5 gallons of water in the brine tank when it refills. Dont forget to add approx. 3"s for the aircheck assy.

[silversaver]

Sorry, I'm lost. What do you mean of 3"s for aircheck assy??

There are more than 5 gallons on water in the brine tank. I'll do another regeneration tonight. I think if I wanna decrease the water in brine tank, perhaps I can lower the BF to 10 so It will decrese the water by 3 gallons if my default was setting at 22. right?

thanks

[ditttohead]

The water level in the brine tank is usually calculated -3" to accomodate for the airrcheck assembly in the brine well. If you regenerate it, you will notice the water level will not drop all the way to the bottom. It is like having a straw in a glass, but it is off the bottom slightly.

[silversaver]

That's the point. As I said, the water is more than that amount....

[silversaver]

After little over 2 weeks of usuage, I do enjoy the Fleck very much. The flow rate were good and all the plastic smell were gone. The regenrate sounds were much louder compare with my old GE, so I set the softener to regenerate in day time instead. Maybe I'll add the sound insulation in the future,

The only problem I had were the smoothness of the water. The 8lbs setting were good, but I missed the silky smoothness of my old GE. Do I wait for another few weeks? Or I can increase BF to 28 for 10lbs salt setting?

thx

[ditttohead]

Some people may try to argue this but... you are right. High salting makes a difference in the feel of the water and it is noticeable. California requires extremely efficient salt settings but depending on where you are in Orange County, if your sewage is ocean discharge, then the brine setting really doesnt matter. Higher will give you better water. http://www.wcponline.com/pdf/1203Michaud.pdf This is one of the better articles explaining the difference between almost soft, and very soft water.

I would wait a couple more weeks to be sure you have the majority of the soft scale that forms in the plumbing during times of hard water is removed. After that, experiment with the salt setting a bit.

[silversaver]

Thank you Dittohead!

[ditttohead]

Sounds high. Take a look at the picture, remove the brine fittings from both ends of the brine tube and make sure the Jaco Style fittings are assembled correctly as shown. Also, if the tube does not have the insert you mentioned earlier, insert it into the tube. It helps make a better seal. Keep me updated as to what you find.

[silversaver]

Dittohead,

I'm not the expert as many of you here, so help me if you can on this question.

Base on your cheat sheet set BF to 22 with 0.25 BLFC = (22 / 4) = 5.5 gallons of water into brine tank. Each gallon of water dissolves 3lbs of salt so 5.5 X 3 = 16.5lbs on salts been used. Since this is a 2 cu ft system so 16.5lbs of salts / 2 cu ft = 8.25lbs of salt per cu ft. right?

but....

when you set the softener running at capacity of 48,000 grains, that is about the capacity of a 1.5 cu ft softener. when you use 16.5lbs / 1.5 cu ft = 11lbs. So you cheat sheet is more like a 11lbs salt per cu ft right? When you set the softener at capacity of 48,000 grains, the meter will think the softener is a 1.5 cu ft system and generates less softwater compare with a 64,000 grains 2 cu ft softener. How can that be an efficiency setting? If you set the softener at capacity of 64,000 grains and set BF to 30, that would pretty much giving you the same 11 lbs of salts per cu ft. but the softener will generate more soft water as you set the meter of Flect valve @ 64,000 and requires less regenerate cycles. Am I missing something here?

[ditttohead]

64000 grains is the theoretical limit of a 2 cubic ffot system, that can only be achieved when regenerating with 18+ pounds of salt per cu. ft. Read the cheat sheet again, you will notice the paragraph explaining the actual capacity.

It would be like rating a cars gas mileage, but only calculating a downhill slope of 30 degrees and coasting with the engine idling. Not exactly real world. A softeners real world capacity is closer to 24K per cu. ft. regenerating with 8 pounds of salt per cu. ft. Anything past that gets very inefficient. Ultra low salting (3-4) pounds per cu. ft. saves a lot of salt, but uses more water and water quality can suffer. 4-8 pounds per cu. ft. is the preferred salting.

[silversaver]

got it. I have already install the tube insert which weren't install before. I'll check on next regeneration

[silversaver]

After using the Fleck 7000 softner for few months, I have to said I had enough. I wonder how you people enjoy the "soft" water from this system. I'm not expert in water softner, but do you need to be one to use it? Play around with salt setting and never once have quality soft water I get from a GE softner. the softner cost me $700 + $500 labor.... not worth the money... going back to GE which design for stupid people. If you want this, $300 come and pick it up.

[Gary Slusser]

Your resin may not be fully regenerated. You could change the salt dose to 30 Lbs and do two manual regenerations, one after the other, with no water use during or between them. Then change the salt dose lbs back to whatever it was supposed to be.

You need to be sure there is 30 lbs of salt in the salt tank for each regeneration. You don't want but a couple lbs over that or the brine refill water will be shut off by the safety float and you won't get 30 lbs worth of salt to dissolve.