Water Softener Installation Problems Fleck2510SE

I found this explanation on the web...I'm adding it to this thread to supplement what has already been said:
Taken from:
http://renalweb.groupee.net/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1011014023/m/6831086794

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The ideal water level in the brine tank depends on how much resin is in your softener and what dose of salt you want to use. The more salt you expose the resin to during a regeneration, the more efficient the regeneration. For example, if you use 15 lbs salt per cubic foot of resin during a regeneration, you should get around 30,000 grains capacity per cubic foot of resin. If you use 6 lbs/ft3, you should get around 20,000 grains/ft3 capacity. Therefore, if you have a 3 cubic foot softener, you should use 45 lbs of salt per regeneration to get 90,000 grains of capacity, or 18 lbs of salt per regeneration to get 60,000 grains of capacity.

How much salt you use during the regeneration depends on how much water you put in the brine tank. The water will saturate with salt at 26.4% solution (this is temperature dependent). Therefore, you will dissolve 264 grams of salt per liter of water (or 2.2 lbs of salt per gallon of water). For a 3 ft3 softener, if you want to use 45 lbs of salt per regeneration, you need to add about 20.5 gallons of water to the brine tank. If you want to use 18 lbs of salt, you need to add a little over 8 gallons of water to the brine tank. Do the calculation for your softener. Too little water will not provide a good regeneration and you may get a small amount of hard water while the softener is running and the softener may exhaust before the next regeneration. Too much water is also a problem. The Brine Draw step of the regeneration is actually 2 steps of the regeneration; Brine Draw and Slow Rinse. At the beginning of this step, the brine solution is drawn into the softener. After all of the brine solution has been drawn into the softener, an air check valve in your brine tube closes. This is a small ball check valve at the bottom of your brine tube in the Brine Tank and it prevents air from being sucked into the softener after all of the brine solution has been drawn into the softener (Brine Tank is empty of solution). The valve on the softener head does not change, so without the brine solution being pulled into the softener, the softener begins the SLOW RINSE step to rinse out the brine solution in the softener. After the Slow Rinse, you should have a Fast Rinse step. The regen valve on the softener will change to provide a higher flowrate for the Fast Rinse step. If you have too much water in your brine tank, you shorten the slow rinse step because it takes longer to draw in all of the brine solution. This will reduce the contact time that the brine solution has with the resin and the shortened Slow Rinse step may result in brine being left in the softener after the Fast Rinse step.

Some of you may have a float valve in your Brine Tank to stop water from entering the Brine Tank if the water level in the Brine Tank get too high.

How much water that enters your brine tank depends on the length of time in your Brine Refill step of the regeneration, the flow restricter in your softener, and the water pressure. If the flow restrictor is partially blocked, you will not get enough water in your brine tank. If you have low water pressure while the brine tank is filling, you may not get enough water in your brine tank. If the time is too long, you may get too much water in your brine tank.

genpop is right, the salt pellets need to be OVER the water level. Yes, you do have a potential to bridge the salt, but there is a technical reason for the salt to be over the water level. Any water that is above the salt will not become saturated with salt. Water that is saturated with salt (brine solution) is heavier than the raw water. This brine solution will sink to the bottom of the Brine Tank and the unsaturated raw water will stay on the top of the Brine Tank. When the unsaturated water is drawn into the softener during the regeneration, it will not have enough salt in it to regenerate the resin. Therefore, you may not get a good regeneration. Some of you may have a false bottom in your brine tank. When the water around the salt is saturated, it will sink to below this false bottom and displace the water that does not have contact with the salt. Therefore, water below the salt is ok. Water above the salt is not ok.

If you can not keep the salt above the water level, you need to install something to mix the water in the brine tank. I have seen air spargers installed to mix the solution in the Brine Tank to cause the water above the salt to become saturated with salt.

Easiest way to determine how much water is in your brine tank is to track how much salt you are using....45 lbs per regeneration, 30 lbs per regeneration, etc. As long as you have at least 4 hours between regenerations and the water level is not above the salt level, the salt should have enough time to saturate the water and become your brine solution.

This may be more than what you were asking for, but hopefully it helped.


The Water Guy - Florian Services

There are a number of errors and misleading statements in that.

I'm not sure what your point is in posting that. Do you see yourself somewhere in all that because of the size of your brink tank maybe?

Remember, you are using a 6lb/ cuft salt dose and get 40K of regenerated capacity in your 2.0 cuft softener with the 12 lbs/regeneration. That gives you great salt efficiency of 3333 grains/lb of salt.

My reason to post it was because I thought it pretty clearly stated the process of regeneration. I did also see a few misleading statments in there but I think most were miswordings and not necesarily a misunderstanding by the poster. ie more salt makes the regeneration process more efficient. I believe this to be misleading but I think he meant that more salt just recharges more resin. Clearly, by his statement, he means that more salt makes it less efficient as this is spelled out in his lbs salt/grains regenerated 50% compared to 30%

He didn't explain a regeneration, just the volume of water in the salt tank and other salt dose things.

Your softener is Post refill, meaning that the control valve puts the water for the next regeneration into the salt tank at the end of this regeneration. When a regeneration starts, the first cycle position is backwash. Then slow rinse/brine draw; they run together, not separately as he allows people to believe. Slow rinse water flow creates the suction for the brine draw. When the brine water is sucked down to the air check in the brine pickup tube in the salt tank (or air gets up to the ball in the air check on Autotrol control valves), it prevents air from being sucked into the softener. And the slow rinse water flow continues until the end of that cycle position. Then it goes into Rapid rinse (a second backwash), then into Final rinse, then refill and then Service.

We do not use 2.2 lbs of salt per gallon of water, Fleck etc. use 3 lbs/gallon and I've always been told the actual figure is 2.7 lbs/gal. You can check that on your control where it says .5gpm or 1.5lb per minute.

The question that started that dissertation you linked to was about the ideal or optimal water level in a salt tank. There is no such thing.

The height of the water in a salt tank between regenerations depends on a number of things; Pre of Post brine refill, the size of the salt tank, the salt dose setting, the volume of salt in the tank, if there is a salt grid and what size it is and the setting height of the brine pickup in the salt tank. All those variables dictate the height of the water in the salt tank between regenerations.

And if the control valve has Pre refill, there will only be 2-3" of water in the bottom of the salt tank between regenerations until the night the unit regenerates. Then two hours before the regeneration, the water is put over in the salt tank and then there is a 2 hour pause for the salt to dissolve before the first backwash starts.

Well, Its been a few more weeks and with my new settings I'm getting 100% soft water all the time. I think I found the formula for best utilization of my small brine tank.

what seemed logical to me and what has worked so far is, by semi trail and error, I allowed my softener to completely discharge (as evident by hard water from the sink taps (cold). Then after a full recharge (max for my brine tank) I monitored my my water hardness/gallons used until I began to get punch through. I then reset my regen gallons to something less (prior to the punch through).

If anything changes I"ll repost here on this thread...I'm pretty sure I've got a good balance now I could try adding a few gallons to see if I can stretch it a bit but I'm pretty happy with salt usage (about 60lbs/mo I think).