Moved in a house with 7000SXT know nothing about water softeners.

[Teqnap]

1. I would add the second bag now. I would pour it into a corner, which will let some salt be above water for the next few regens.

2. Do not manually bypass the softener during regen. If you did that, the softener would not get water needed to regen. The softener itself will bypass water around itself during the regen, in case you want to flush a toilet.

If you have not done a recent regen, that is good from a troubleshooting point of view. Yea, I would expect that resin to be long depleted of softening ability. So no salt for months could explain hardness all on its own.

Ok I will add the new bag which would make total of 80lbs of salt in the tank and start the regen.
Is it ok If i use the water while its regening?

 

[Reach4]

Here are preliminary suggested settings, but will be changed once you get the Hach 5-B readings. You will probably want to do your second regen sooner than usual, because your resin is so exhausted.

System info (not programmed)
salt lb/cuft : 8 ; A choice ( efficiency vs capacity)
BLFC : 0.5 ; Brine Refill rate GPM
cubic ft resin : 2.0 ; Same as (nominal grains/32,000)
Raw hardness : 12.0 ; including iron etc
Estimated gal/day : 240.0 ; 60 gal per person typical calc
Estimated days each regen : 13.9 ; presuming days each use reserve capacity

Fleck 7000SXT Settings:
DF = Gal ; Units
VT = dF2b ; Downflw/Upflw, Double Backwash
CT = Fd ; Meter Delayed regen trigger
C = 48.0 ; capacity in 1000 grains
H = 14 ; Hardness grains after compensation
RS = cr ; Cr = base reserve on recent experience
CR = 0 ; 0 is default (leave it)
DO = 14 ; Day Override (typ 28 if no iron/Mn)
RT = 2:00 ; Regen time (default 2 AM)
B1 = 8 ; Backwash 1 (minutes)
Bd = 60 ; Brine draw minutes
B2 = 5 ; Backwash 2 (minutes)
RR = 6 ; Rapid Rinse minutes
BF = 11 ; Brine fill minutes
FM = t1.2 (usual) ; t1.2 is default flow meter

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Teqnap]

This is what the tank looks like after I added-half of the new bag. I will start the regen with your settings.

 

[Teqnap]

I little excited wanted to update on the process BD saying 50 mins left and the water in the tank is draining out so a good sign?

 

[Reach4]

Yes. For a 60 minute BD, you would like the brine to suck down as low as it will go in about 15 minutes. So if you have sucked down about 2/3 of where you will be going in 10 minutes, you are right on track.

Once the brine is sucked down, the air check valve closes. The remainder of the 60 seconds is where the brine slug moves slowly thru the media tank and resin, and then out of the drain line. The last part is slowly washing the salt away from the resin and the media tank.

Did you notice that the water level in the brine tube is higher than the brine liquid by the salt? The brine by the salt is saturated, and therefore denser.

 

[Bannerman]

A major cause of your problem is the 64,000 grains Capacity setting. As previously stated, 40 lbs salt would be required to regenerate 64K grains of capacity each cycle, so the 24 lbs that was being dissolved, did not regenerate 64K grains so your softener was running out of capacity long before each regeneration occured, and was allowing high hardness leakage through the resin even after regeneration.

Because all of the resin's capacity has been depleted, the resin's capacity should now be fully regenerated before correctly programming the softener for ongoing use.

Since the current Brine Fill setting is resulting in 24 lbs salt being dissolved, suggest ensuring there is sufficient salt in the brine tank, then perform a full manual regeneration. Once the 1st regen cycle has completed, which will require 106 minutes with the current settings, then reprogram the controller's Capacity setting to 48, and the Brine Fill setting to 11-minutes. Wait ~30 minutes to allow sufficient salt to dissolve for a 2nd regen cycle, then perform a 2nd manual regeneration. The 2nd regeneration could be started directly before you depart for bed. In the morning, you should find the soft water to be considerably softer than it has been, but if your home is equipped with a tank type water heater, the hot water will remain harder than the cold water until all of the water in the WH has been replaced with new softer water.

With hardness indicated with large number gaps between each color indicator, test strips are not an appropriate method for accurately determining hardness. I remain uncertain of your actual raw well water hardness level. Suggest obtaining a Hach 5B to obtain an accurate hardness reading. Also unclear is if there is any iron present, nor do we know the number of residents in the home so as to determine and advise you on the appropriate Reserve Capacity setting to program.

Always recommended to fill the Brine tank to the top with salt. With the more efficient settings specified above, you will probably not need to top-up the brine tank with additional salt for numerous months.

 

[Teqnap]

Yes. For a 60 minute BD, you would like the brine to suck down as low as it will go in about 15 minutes. So if you have sucked down about 2/3 of where you will be going in 10 minutes, you are right on track.

Once the brine is sucked down, the air check valve closes. The remainder of the 60 seconds is where the brine slug moves slowly thru the media tank and resin, and then out of the drain line. The last part is slowly washing the salt away from the resin and the media tank.

Did you notice that the water level in the brine tube is higher than the brine liquid by the salt? The brine by the salt is saturated, and therefore denser.

The water in the brine tube is higher than before. Both water level and salt level decreased by a noticeable amount.

 

[Reach4]

When you test the softened water, start with cold. The tank water heater will hold hardness longer for two reasons. There is water in the tank, plus there may be hardness deposits it the tank that will take a good while to dissolve away.

You may want to trigger a second regen early to help the resin to catch up.

I hope the water feels better already.

 

[Teqnap]

A major cause of your problem is the 64,000 grains Capacity setting. As previously stated, 40 lbs salt would be required to regenerate 64K grains of capacity each cycle, so the 24 lbs that was being dissolved, did not regenerate 64K grains so your softener was running out of capacity long before each regeneration occured, and was allowing high hardness leakage through the resin even after regeneration.

Because all of the resin's capacity has been depleted, the resin's capacity should now be fully regenerated before correctly programming the softener for ongoing use.

Since the current Brine Fill setting is resulting in 24 lbs salt being dissolved, suggest ensuring there is sufficient salt in the brine tank, then perform a full manual regeneration. Once the 1st regen cycle has completed, which will require 106 minutes with the current settings, then reprogram the controller's Capacity setting to 48, and the Brine Fill setting to 11-minutes. Wait ~30 minutes to allow sufficient salt to dissolve for a 2nd regen cycle, then perform a 2nd manual regeneration. The 2nd regeneration could be started directly before you depart for bed. In the morning, you should find the soft water to be considerably softer than it has been, but if your home is equipped with a tank type water heater, the hot water will remain harder than the cold water until all of the water in the WH has been replaced with new softer water.

With hardness indicated with large number gaps between each color indicator, test strips are not an appropriate method for accurately determining hardness. I remain uncertain of your actual raw well water hardness level. Suggest obtaining a Hach 5B to obtain an accurate hardness reading. Also unclear is if there is any iron present, nor do we know the number of residents in the home so as to determine and advise you on the appropriate Reserve Capacity setting to program.

Always recommended to fill the Brine tank to the top with salt. With the more efficient settings specified above, you will probably not need to top-up the brine tank with additional salt for numerous months.

So

When you test the softened water, start with cold. The tank water heater will hold hardness longer for two reasons. There is water in the tank, plus there may be hardness deposits it the tank that will take a good while to dissolve away.

You may want to trigger a second regen early to help the resin to catch up.

I hope the water feels better already.

I did the home test I posted on previously and the hardness level is already down by 1 color to the soft site. I will do another regen.

 

[Reach4]

It it is really down to 1, you could hold off until you test for 2 grains. Take note of the count-down gallons to get some more info.

However, if you did choose that automatic (RS=cr) reserve, that remaining gallon countdown may be a little jumpy. If you wanted to switch to a fixed gallons of reserve, that is easy enough. The automatic is said to be good for those who tend to use a lot of water on Mondays and Fridays, for example, and it learns your habits. The other good way is to set a fixed number of gallons for reserve (such as 60 gallons per person).

Anyway, I am pleased that your softener is behaving nicely.

 

[Teqnap]

It it is really down to 1, you could hold off until you test for 2 grains. Take note of the count-down gallons to get some more info.

However, if you did choose that automatic (RS=cr) reserve, that remaining gallon countdown may be a little jumpy. If you wanted to switch to a fixed gallons of reserve, that is easy enough. The automatic is said to be good for those who tend to use a lot of water on Mondays and Fridays, for example, and it learns your habits. The other good way is to set a fixed number of gallons for reserve (such as 60 gallons per person).

Anyway, I am pleased that your softener is behaving nicely.

Yep I hope when I get the new tester I can optimize more settings.
Thank you all for your help!
Last question how do I calculate what to put as my Hardness level in the settings.

 

[Reach4]

Read about high hardness compensation. http://www.terrylove.com/forums/ind...0-sxt-programming-settings.60651/#post-450189

This uses a table with some granularity. I sometimes use a smoother formula that I curve-fit from the table.

Also, if you have iron, add 5 grains of hardness for each ppm of iron, and 1 grain for each ppm of manganese.

Once you have your Hach 5-B, completely soft water, such as distilled, will turn blue before you add any drops. If you find that you are needing 2 drops before you regen, then you can bump your H up a bit to compensate. If you always need zero drops, you could decrease H a tad, and see what happens.