Manual regeneration on a "heavy water use" day?

[EvanVanVan]

What exactly qualifies as a heavy water use day? A lot of the videos or manuals state it's advisable to do a manual regeneration on a "heavy water use day," giving the examples of a heavy laundry day or having a lot of guests over at the house. Is there an actual gallon usage to that statement?

Originally, I thought it had to do with using up stored capacity (I.e. water stored in one of the tanks) But as far as I can tell, water softening happens on the fly as water passes through the resin tank. Unless, it does in fact need to sit in the resin tank for a certain amount of time to be softened?

I don't understand what heavy water use has to do with it if it's set to automatically regenerate every [3000] gallons.

 

[Reach4]

You would only do that if the count-down counter was down low or negative.

Suppose you expect shower-taking company arriving at noon, and the count-down counter says 60 gallons at 8am. You might be better to trigger an immediate regen, so that the capacity will be at max when they arrive.

If the counter says 1500 gallons to go, you would not trigger an early regen.

In early regens, besides the immediate, there is the one that says regen tonight at 2am, even if the counter has not counted down by then.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Bannerman]

A softener softens on the fly, as it is equipped with plastic resin beads which have an electrical charge, similar to a magnet. Hardness minerals such as calcium and magnesium with an opposite electrical charge, are removed by sticking to the resin beads. During this process called ion exchange, sodium will be released from the resin beads, in direct proportion to the amount of hardness minerals being removed.

As the resin's hardness removal capacity is directly conditional to the amount of resin within the tank, and the quantity of salt dissolved each regeneration cycle, we will need to know that info to calculate the amount of capacity to be regenerated each cycle.

Also required, will be the hardness level of the incoming raw water, and the usual amount of soft water consumed each day, or the number of residents to permit soft water consumption to be estimated.

As you stated it will provide 3000 gallons following each regeneration cycle, I suspect it is equipped with a digital controller which shows remaining gallons capacity which is reduced each day. Once the remaining gallons is less than needed to fulfill one full day water consumption, then regeneration will be delayed until usually 2am the following morning, whereby a regeneration cycle will be performed using salt brine to restore the resin's hardness removal capacity.

A single resin tank softener cannot supply soft water while regeneration is occurring, which is why regeneration is delayed and normally performed during the night when there is usually minimal/no soft water being consumed.

To prevent more capacity from being consumed than will be regenerated each cycle, a portion of the capacity regenerated, will be automatically subtracted prior to the 3000 gallons being displayed. This subtracted percentage or gallons amount will be programed in the controller as Reserve Capacity (RC), which will normally equal 1-day soft water gallons, so if for example, your controller's RC setting is 200 gallons, then 3200 gallons Capacity will be actually regenerated each cycle. It is some portion of this 200 gallons Reserve Capacity that will be utilized to continue to supply sufficient softening capacity after the controller shows 0-gallons remaining, until regeneration is actually performed at 2am the following morning.

If your softener's controller is a digital display model, it will likely be fairly simple to determine the settings currently programmed and needed to appropriately answer your question.