Fleck 5600 SXT & hard water

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bain

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Fleck 5600SXT - Purchased Oct 2010

I've had hard water the last several weeks, and finally looked into it after a house guest mentioned how soft our water used to feel. There are 2 adults and 1 toddler in house.

My settings are below

Unit capacity set to 25k (actual 32k 1.0 cuft)
H 34. Hardness
RS SF. Reserve selection
SF 15. Safety factor
DO 9 day override
BW 10 backwash
BD 60 brine draw
RR 12 rapid rinse
BF 10 brine fill


0.5 gpm flow limit for brine


The City water report from 2011 is below

Average in mg/l

Total Hardness as CaCO3 157

Calcium Hardness 103
Magnesium Hardness 54

Iron - Highest detected 0.013 ppm

I'm not sure if I used the data correctly, but an online calulator indicated this is High or very High levels, and gave a hardness level of 33.4 .

I performed a manual regen over the weekend, and still the cold water did not seem soft. Monday (yesterday) I inspected the injector throat & screen, pulled the downspout from resin tank (upper and lower basket are clear), watched the valve & pistons cycle through each position, and did 2 more manual regens. The cold water now feels fairly soft (not as slimy as I remember it, but better).

Are my settings ok? Am I not getting enough brine in to regen properly? What would you change or look at next?


-Bain
 

ditttohead

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bain

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Ordered straight from Hach. Anything I can check while awaiting shipment?
 

Gary Slusser

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Now being on city water... if you haven't used the highest hardness in the entire system to size and then program your softener for, good you are buying a test kit like that because you'll be doing a lot of testing to find out the max water hardness in your city water so you can reprogram the softener. Sometimes the city water hardness leel changes due to teh seasons but....

The reason for that is because over time the city mixes different water sources together due to maintenance of the system, well rehab or a bad pump etc,, etc. and you get higher water hardness delivered to your house but the softener doesn't know that and eventually you get hard water through the softener.

The cure is to use their highest hardness in their system but, as you reprogram you need to regenerate the resin at 15 lbs/cuft of resin and do it twice with no water use during or between the two regenerations at that max salt setting. That regenerates all the resin, then you program the correct lbs for your salt efficiency and based on the new hardness figure.
 

bain

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Gary,

Thanks for the reply, I had been planning based off the average rates, not maximum, I will adjust my line of thought here as that makes sense.

I attached the water quality report. The maximum Calcium & Magnesium were 116 & 73 mg/l, which according to http://www.lenntech.com/ro/water-hardness.htm gives me 41.3 hardness. Given the water report, does a 42 (rounded up) hardness sound correct for the setting?

Quincy Water.jpg

Full water report here http://www.ci.quincy.il.us/files/documents/document/000/000/631.2012WaterQualityReport.pdf
 

bain

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The Hach test kit arrived, my source water is 9 gpg, and the treated water is 0. However these awesome results are after 4 regeneration cycles over an 8 day period.

What are the recommended settings going forward? Below is what I currently have set ( I now know the hardness setting is way off, which makes me wonder how I ended up with hard water break through in the first place)

Unit capacity set to 25k (actual 32k 1.0 cuft)
H 34
RS SF. Reserve selection
SF 15. Safety factor
DO 9 day override
BW 10 backwash
BD 60 brine draw
RR 12 rapid rinse
BF 10 brine fill
 

ditttohead

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Confirm the BLFC size, it is on a sticker where the brine line attachs to the control valve. It should be either .25 or .5 GPM.

Hardness, set to 9 or 10. Since your hardness varies, you could either set it for the high side, but this will use twice the salt and water, or you can test your raw water occassionally with your Hach 5B test kit.

Here is the programming guide for the 5600SXT w/ 1 cu. ft. of resin.

5600SXT 1 web.jpg
 

bain

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BLFC is .5 GPM

According to your guide I should change

BW from 10 to 5
RR from 12 to 5
BF from 10 to 6

These changes and my hardness setting going from 34 to 9 all reduce the frequency of regeneration and salt usage, so I'm still not sure why I experienced hard water break through before. Apparently it is currently programmed to run much more often than necessary. I use solar salt if that makes a difference or if there are recommendations with this system.

Thanks for all the help
 
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