I have an Autotrol 255 based system and it's been having trouble drawing brine. The symptom is that the air check at the valve sucks the ball down right away and nothing sucks in. I've found that if I submerge the line to the salt/brine tank directly in the brine and bypass all the floats and check valves in the tank, it functions happily. I have removed, cleaned and inspected the float system in the tank and it seems to be in working order, though I'm a little confused as to how the design is intended to work.
It looks like when the float is to the top, the valve is completely closed. To draw brine, the system would have to fight against the float... don't know if that makes sense. Part of the situation is that the brine tank has a lot of extra water since it isn't drawing but must be adding more water every cycle. So the float is fully submerged at this point.
If anyone has any insight on things that can go wrong with the float/valve setups in the tank and what to do about, that would be great. Interestingly, my manual says that no check valve is needed in the tank, since it has one on the main control valve anyway. Does that mean I could just stick a plain tube straight into the tank and be done with it? The thing in the tank has an air check, but also the float which would help prevent overflowing the tank if there was a malfunction. I think I'd want to keep the latter.
It looks like when the float is to the top, the valve is completely closed. To draw brine, the system would have to fight against the float... don't know if that makes sense. Part of the situation is that the brine tank has a lot of extra water since it isn't drawing but must be adding more water every cycle. So the float is fully submerged at this point.
If anyone has any insight on things that can go wrong with the float/valve setups in the tank and what to do about, that would be great. Interestingly, my manual says that no check valve is needed in the tank, since it has one on the main control valve anyway. Does that mean I could just stick a plain tube straight into the tank and be done with it? The thing in the tank has an air check, but also the float which would help prevent overflowing the tank if there was a malfunction. I think I'd want to keep the latter.