Regen Draw time ??

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bsnider

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I have a clack EE with 1.5 ft3 high capacity resin.
1 person household, but I bought a 40000 grain unit to size for the house.
water usage is 30 gpd. (5700 gal/6 months)

My ? is I have seen a 60 min draw time used by most posters here- My brine tank is empty 15 min into the "Draw" cycle. Does the resin need the rest of the 60 min to regen, or can I set my draw time to 15 min?

my times are:
13 min backwash
25 min draw
10 min backwash
15 min rinse
8 min fill

Set to regen every 1500 gallons of water use- I know this regens the resin every 50 days- but weekly or bi-weekly would be a waste of salt and water.
 

Akpsdvan

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You need to keep the brine draw at the time that it is, the draw from the brine tank might only take 10-15 minutes but it is going to need about 2-3 times that amount of time to do the slow rinse of the brine on out of the resin bed.
 

Bob999

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Depending on your water conditions some of the times might be off.

So what is your water analysis? Hardness, Iron content and any other info you have.
City water or well?

What is the size of the Brine Line Flow Control (BLFC)--there is typically a sticker on the back of the unit that has the size--a typical size is 0.5 gpm but there are many other sizes.

Typically a 1.5 cubic foot unit is called a 45,000 or 48,000 grain unit. A 1.25 cubic foot unit is typically called 40,000 grains. So which do you have?
 

Gary Slusser

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I have a clack EE with 1.5 ft3 high capacity resin.
1 person household, but I bought a 40000 grain unit to size for the house.
water usage is 30 gpd. (5700 gal/6 months)

My ? is I have seen a 60 min draw time used by most posters here- My brine tank is empty 15 min into the "Draw" cycle. Does the resin need the rest of the 60 min to regen, or can I set my draw time to 15 min?

my times are:
13 min backwash
25 min draw
10 min backwash
15 min rinse
8 min fill

Set to regen every 1500 gallons of water use- I know this regens the resin every 50 days- but weekly or bi-weekly would be a waste of salt and water.
Your programming is way off.

You want the brine out of the tank in the first 10-20 minutes and then the slow rinse to continue for about 20 minutes; so Brine draw/slow rinse should run for like 45 minutes, not your 25 minutes.

Your 8 minutes of refill is not enough salt to get 40K of capacity out of 1.5 cuft of regular mesh resin. You won't get 50 days of soft water then. Then you need to do 2 manual regens one after the other at 23 lbs of salt each to completely regenerate 1.5 cuft of regular mesh resin back to its max of 45K. Which is terrible salt efficiency.

So where's your water and salt savings? 50 days is way too long between regnerations, you will probably ruin the resin because it will be loaded up with invisible dirt.
 

bsnider

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Gary, one thing confuses me- everyone wants me to regen more often so my resin doesn't get "fouled". I dont understand- if I have a certain amount of "dirt" per gallon, then how can my resin get more fouled in 50 days if I have put the same # of gallons through it as I would if I used 100 gallons a day for 15 days?
Also, you say the 8 min of Fill time is not enough- The ? I have is- how do I know how much salt I am using- I can find tables for my resin which tell me how much salt I need to use. The fill rate is about .5 gal/min- My last regen I had a fill time of 13 min, so I actually have NOT regened with the 8 setting. 13 min does not quite reach the float- but it is close.
The 8 min time for FILL put 11 inches into my brine tank- a 24 inch round tank.

Thanks for any help!
 

Gary Slusser

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Backwash sends any sediment to drain. The longer it goes past 7-9 days, the harder it is for backwash to get the dirt off the resin beads. Dirt build up covers the ion exchange sites and that causes a loss of capacity. So IMO the choices are Regen every 7-9 days or suffer the consequences. Does your car take longer to wash it the longer you go between washes or not?

I said the 8 minutes of refill is not sufficient salt lbs/volume to regenerate your K of capacity.

For more info on programming, click on the sizing link in my signature.
 

bsnider

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I see your point about the car washing example ( of course, my subaru has not seen suds in at least 2 years)- so I could just do the backwash and not the regen. So the ? remains how many gallons of water do I need to use in the FILL step?
 

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As I said before; For more info on programming, click on the sizing link in my signature but...

To get 40K in a 1.5 cuft of regular mesh resin you need to use like 20 lbs IIRC, and I don't know that I am without looking it up but, 40K is way too high and allows you those 50 days between regens which is way too long, so how many K you want dictates the fill time in minutes and the lbs of salt used.
 

Jadnashua

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Assuming you start with fully generated resin, you only need to replenish the amount of 'use' you got out of it. One person, over a week, may not use anywhere near the full capacity of the resin in your tank. But, you can still regen it. It is better to recharge it periodically, like about weekly, to prevent any crud from becoming more solid and harder to remove.
 

big dripper

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Gary, one thing confuses me- everyone wants me to regen more often so my resin doesn't get "fouled". I dont understand- if I have a certain amount of "dirt" per gallon, then how can my resin get more fouled in 50 days if I have put the same # of gallons through it as I would if I used 100 gallons a day for 15 days?
Also, you say the 8 min of Fill time is not enough- The ? I have is- how do I know how much salt I am using- I can find tables for my resin which tell me how much salt I need to use. The fill rate is about .5 gal/min- My last regen I had a fill time of 13 min, so I actually have NOT regened with the 8 setting. 13 min does not quite reach the float- but it is close.
The 8 min time for FILL put 11 inches into my brine tank- a 24 inch round tank.

Thanks for any help!
You should not be too concerned if your water use over a 15-day period is minimal. Your resins won't get fouled. Now, if you had heavy use over the same time, then yes, I would recommend a more frequent regeneration. There are advantages to more frequent compared to infrequent regenerations, but yours will be fine.
 

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You should not be too concerned if your water use over a 15-day period is minimal. Your resins won't get fouled. Now, if you had heavy use over the same time, then yes, I would recommend a more frequent regeneration. There are advantages to more frequent compared to infrequent regenerations, but yours will be fine.
I think you are misreading again Andy.

He wants to program for 50 days, not 15 days as you are talking about; he mentioned 15 days as an example IF he used more water. Read it again without trying to disagree with what I said and you'll see your error.
 

big dripper

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bsnider, we have seasonal pulls (to prevent from freezing) that go idle for months and months and have been working fine for years and years. You really needn't worry. Resins area actually much tougher than some are lead to believe, kind of like limescale.
 
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Gary Slusser

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Gary23, we have seasonal pulls (to prevent from freezing) that go idle for months and months and have been working fine for years and years. You really needn't worry. Resins area actually much tougher than some are lead to believe, kind of like limescale.
Andy... after the softener is "pulled", there is no water flow through it. Gary23 wants to go 50 days with his softener in service (between regenerations), meaning he is running water through it most every day.

There is a tremendous negative difference between a softener that is sitting around unused and out of service and one that is in service being used every day.
 

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bsnider, there is not a 'tremendous negative difference' in these circumstances. Your softener will work just fine with lengthy pauses between regenerations. You might want to manually regenerate it once in while for peace of mind but there is no need to worry, this of course depends on your source water test results. There are those that also, feel that resins sitting in a brine solution causes problems (osmotic shock) AND that softnened water will dissolve hard limescale build up....

Was still hoping to hear what your water conditions were, especailly the iron count.
Unless you have any more comments or questions, I won't comment further.
 

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bsnider, there is not a 'tremendous negative difference' in these circumstances.
Of course there is a tremendous difference between regenerating every 15 days or every 50 days.

Your softener will work just fine with lengthy pauses between regenerations. You might want to manually regenerate it once in while for peace of mind but there is no need to worry, this of course depends on your source water test results.
How do you know his softener will work just fine when you then say he can regenerate it for peace of mind....

Was still hoping to hear what your water conditions were, especailly the iron count.
Unless you have any more comments or questions, I won't comment further.
You should know this before saying he can go 50 days between regenerations.

There are those that also, feel that resins sitting in a brine solution causes problems (osmotic shock) AND that softnened water will dissolve hard limescale build up....
I see that you don't suggest softened water in a pool, why is that? Does it have anything to do with the softened water dissolving grout and concrete? I know it is and then, like here, you say softened water can't dissolve hardness scale in plumbing or a water heater. LOL

Andy, as a Kinetico salesman, never having done much if any service work, you need more service field experience because your CWS sales training isn't allowing you to give very good advice, especially with equipment you don't sell or sell rarely.
 

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The OP has never posted his water analysis. He has also posted contradictory information about the size of the softener. He has never posted the capacity programmed in the unit. How can anyone make informed judgements and recommendations without knowing the water analysis and size of the softener?

Statements like "Your programming is way off." and "I said the 8 minutes of refill is not sufficient salt lbs/volume to regenerate your K of capacity." are just a lot of hot air without the water analysis, size of softener and the programmed capacity.
 

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The OP has never posted his water analysis. He has also posted contradictory information about the size of the softener. He has never posted the capacity programmed in the unit. How can anyone make informed judgements and recommendations without knowing the water analysis and size of the softener?

Statements like "Your programming is way off." and "I said the 8 minutes of refill is not sufficient salt lbs/volume to regenerate your K of capacity." are just a lot of hot air without the water analysis, size of softener and the programmed capacity.
He stated 1.5 cuft and 40K. 8 minutes refill is not sufficient salt in lbs to regenerate 40K in a 1.5 cuft or a 40K 1.25 cuft softener. That makes his programming way off, incorrect, wrong for either a 1.25 or 1.5 cuft softener.

And to come up with the math to prove that you do not need to know anything about the water analysis or how many people are in the house etc.. all you need is the volume of resin and the lbs of salt used and you have the K of capacity. In this case the refill minutes = x lbs of salt.

His slow rinse/brine draw time is way low at 25 minutes.

Here's what he said in his first post, #1 in the thread.
Regen Draw time ??

I have a clack EE with 1.5 ft3 high capacity resin.
1 person household, but I bought a 40000 grain unit to size for the house.
water usage is 30 gpd. (5700 gal/6 months)

My ? is I have seen a 60 min draw time used by most posters here- My brine tank is empty 15 min into the "Draw" cycle. Does the resin need the rest of the 60 min to regen, or can I set my draw time to 15 min?

my times are:
13 min backwash
25 min draw
10 min backwash
15 min rinse
8 min fill

Set to regen every 1500 gallons of water use- I know this regens the resin every 50 days- but weekly or bi-weekly would be a waste of salt and water.​
 

Bob999

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He stated 1.5 cuft and 40K. 8 minutes refill is not sufficient salt in lbs to regenerate 40K in a 1.5 cuft or a 40K 1.25 cuft softener. That makes his programming way off, incorrect, wrong for either a 1.25 or 1.5 cuft softener.

And to come up with the math to prove that you do not need to know anything about the water analysis or how many people are in the house etc.. all you need is the volume of resin and the lbs of salt used and you have the K of capacity. In this case the refill minutes = x lbs of salt.

His slow rinse/brine draw time is way low at 25 minutes.

Here's what he said in his first post, #1 in the thread.
Regen Draw time ??
I have a clack EE with 1.5 ft3 high capacity resin.
1 person household, but I bought a 40000 grain unit to size for the house.
water usage is 30 gpd. (5700 gal/6 months)

My ? is I have seen a 60 min draw time used by most posters here- My brine tank is empty 15 min into the "Draw" cycle. Does the resin need the rest of the 60 min to regen, or can I set my draw time to 15 min?

my times are:
13 min backwash
25 min draw
10 min backwash
15 min rinse
8 min fill

Set to regen every 1500 gallons of water use- I know this regens the resin every 50 days- but weekly or bi-weekly would be a waste of salt and water.

Thank you for reinforcing my point. He said he has a 1.5 cubic foot unit--a 40,000 grain unit--clearly contradictory.

He never posted the capacity setting in the control.

He never posted the water analysis.

I agree that the 25 minute "draw" (if it in fact refers to brining/slow rinse) is too short.
 

Gary Slusser

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Thank you for reinforcing my point. He said he has a 1.5 cubic foot unit--a 40,000 grain unit--clearly contradictory.
I don't see how I'm reinforcing your point, your point has no basis in fact.

And his statement is not contradictory if you have experience and understand how prospective customers and customers talk about softeners, which I do.

He or I can program a 1.5 cuft at 40K but his 8 minutes refill won't get the required number of lbs of salt, so he can't get 40k, as I told him and you. You seem to be unable to understand that though. Personally I think you just want to pick at things I say but, maybe you really don't understand because of a lack of knowledge or experience?

He never posted the capacity setting in the control.

He never posted the water analysis.
ummm I think the 40K is the capacity he wants to use but OK, why do you mistakenly think he has to post the K of capacity and his water analysis data for you to answer his question and caution him about something you see as wrong; such as 25 or 15 minutes of slow rinse/brine draw which was his question: My ? is I have seen a 60 min draw time used by most posters here- My brine tank is empty 15 min into the "Draw" cycle. Does the resin need the rest of the 60 min to regen, or can I set my draw time to 15 min? )?

I agree that the 25 minute "draw" (if it in fact refers to brining/slow rinse) is too short.
Now Bob.... if you had any experience in dealing with the 'I wanna buy a softener' or 'I just bought a softener and I...' public, you wouldn't be so picky as to how they say or identify something they don't fully understand, like the word "draw", but I do and can tell you he means slow rinse/brine draw that his Clack shows on the display as Brining. Now we can get into why he would see Brining on his display and call it "draw" if you want to but I think you already know why.AC
 

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I don't see how I'm reinforcing your point, your point has no basis in fact.

And his statement is not contradictory if you have experience and understand how prospective customers and customers talk about softeners, which I do.

He or I can program a 1.5 cuft at 40K but his 8 minutes refill won't get the required number of lbs of salt, so he can't get 40k, as I told him and you. You seem to be unable to understand that though. Personally I think you just want to pick at things I say but, maybe you really don't understand because of a lack of knowledge or experience?


ummm I think the 40K is the capacity he wants to use but OK, why do you mistakenly think he has to post the K of capacity and his water analysis data for you to answer his question and caution him about something you see as wrong; such as 25 or 15 minutes of slow rinse/brine draw which was his question: My ? is I have seen a 60 min draw time used by most posters here- My brine tank is empty 15 min into the "Draw" cycle. Does the resin need the rest of the 60 min to regen, or can I set my draw time to 15 min? )?


Now Bob.... if you had any experience in dealing with the 'I wanna buy a softener' or 'I just bought a softener and I...' public, you wouldn't be so picky as to how they say or identify something they don't fully understand, like the word "draw", but I do and can tell you he means slow rinse/brine draw that his Clack shows on the display as Brining. Now we can get into why he would see Brining on his display and call it "draw" if you want to but I think you already know why.AC


Well another bashing post but one devoid of facts and on point information. Rather you repeatedly refer to your "experience" selling softeners (from a no fixed address mobile home). Not a credential that I consider of much value! But certainly you are free to make what ever claims you want to make about your self proclaimed expertise secure in the knoweldge that on the internet there is no way to validate or disprove such claims.

I said: "He said he has a 1.5 cubic foot unit--a 40,000 grain unit--clearly contradictory." I was correct.

I said: "He never posted the capacity setting in the control." I was correct.

I said: "He never posted the water analysis." I was correct.

I move that this thread be closed. The OP is long gone.
 
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