Hamilton Beach Glacier Series Programming Question

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Hello all,

I have a Hamilton Beach Glacier Series Water Softener. Here's the manual for it: http://ngsales.net/valves/tech_hb.pdf

I just performed a water test and everything came out ideal with water hardness at softest level and iron content at lowest testable result (same with copper, nitrate, etc...).

So what's the problem you may be asking. The problem is the water softener is regenerating every single day and costing a fortune on the water bill and driving water usage up in this drought affected area I live in to the point where it's going to become a problem with the utility company.

I checked the settings and the time of day is correct and the time of regeneration at 2:00 a.m. which is the default which is fine but I have no idea how to determine what the hardness, salt amount (and we use potassium not salt so...) and the capacity numbers should be.

There's about 190 lbs of potassium chloride in the stand alone dry tank.

Can anyone help me determine the correct settings to finish the level 1 programming?
 
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I have a question on P4 and P5 settings. Perhaps I could get some help from mialynette2003 again or another user who has the experience to help. Please see the link in the first post in this thread for the water softener online manual. Thank you.

The Level 1 parameters are as follows:

P1 Time of day: Set to the correct time of day.
P2 Time of Regeneration: Set to default of 2:00pm
P3 Water Hardness Setting: Set to default of 15
P4 Salt Amount (maximum): 3.0 <-------- Is this correct? I have about 90 lbs of potassium chloride in the stand alone dry tank.
P5 System Capacity: 14.1 <--------- Is this correct given the p12 value is set to US instead of metric?

Note: p12 value is set to default of 0
 
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Reach4

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You have the MTK-SP-1044 with the 10x44 resin tank? That would normally have 1.25 cuft of resin.

Your controller appears to be the Technetics Plus 1000i. http://www.softenerparts.com/Technetics_1000_1100_s/44.htm

To know hardness, you will want to get that from your water company/department. Even better, get a Hach 5B hardness test and test it yourself. You need that to set P3.
If using sodium chloride, P5 is probably OK if you leave your P4 set to 3. If you changed P4 to 6, then change P5 to 25. However using potassium chloride, those numbers would probably change some. With potassium chloride, the temperature of the water becomes a significant factor. Since I find "sodium" and not "potassium" in your manual, I think the calculations that the controller performs are more oriented to sodium chloride.

3 pounds of salt is on the very low side. Is this chlorinated water? If so, you probably have no iron, so low salt levels might be OK. I think you usually need more potassium chloride. See https://terrylove.com/forums/index....sxt-potassium-setting-help.56294/#post-414683 https://terrylove.com/forums/index....tener-float-valve-assembly.50071/#post-367796 for some discussion of using KCl in a softener. I would switch to NaCl to simplify things and save money, unless you are on a very sodium-restricted diet and you want to drink a lot of the softener water.
 
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Hello Reach4,

Yes I have the Technetic Plus 1000i controller. I'm using potassium instead of sodium chloride. The P15 setting is to regen every 14 days instead of the default of every day. I AM on good clean chlorinated city water and the water test came just as you said with no iron or copper to speak of showing in the water test. In fact, the strip test had iron at zero as in 0 < 1 lol.

P4 is 3 and P5 is 14.1 but the P12 setting is 0 which is U.S. not metric so a question I have is should I change the p12 setting to 1 for metric?

And the last two links you posted were informational. We have the water softener professionally serviced every three years so have avoided the potassium caking problem described in the last link you posted. We have an older person here who's on a salt restricted diet so I think we'll have to stay with the potassium because of their health issue.


You have the MTK-SP-1044 with the 10x44 resin tank? That would normally have 1.25 cuft of resin.

Your controller appears to be the Technetics Plus 1000i. http://www.softenerparts.com/Technetics_1000_1100_s/44.htm

To know hardness, you will want to get that from your water company/department. Even better, get a Hach 5B hardness test and test it yourself. You need that to set P3.
If using sodium chloride, P5 is probably OK if you leave your P4 set to 3. If you changed P4 to 6, then change P5 to 25. However using potassium chloride, those numbers would probably change some. With potassium chloride, the temperature of the water becomes a significant factor. Since I find "sodium" and not "potassium" in your manual, I think the calculations that the controller performs are more oriented to sodium chloride.

3 pounds of salt is on the very low side. Is this chlorinated water? If so, you probably have no iron, so low salt levels might be OK. I think you usually need more potassium chloride. See https://terrylove.com/forums/index....sxt-potassium-setting-help.56294/#post-414683 https://terrylove.com/forums/index....tener-float-valve-assembly.50071/#post-367796 for some discussion of using KCl in a softener. I would switch to NaCl to simplify things and save money, unless you are on a very sodium-restricted diet and you want to drink a lot of the softener water.
 

Mialynette2003

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Using potassium chloride requires more per regen than soduim chloride. Using a Hach 5B will tell you if you get hard water prior to a regen. If so, adjust the salt to the 3.6 setting. BTW, Hach sells the 5B online from under $19.00.
 
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So your recommendation is P4 3.6?

I suppose P5 would remain at the default of 14.1 as that's system capacity. Right?

Using potassium chloride requires more per regen than soduim chloride. Using a Hach 5B will tell you if you get hard water prior to a regen. If so, adjust the salt to the 3.6 setting. BTW, Hach sells the 5B online from under $19.00.
 

Reach4

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He is saying something like this.
  1. Get the Hach 5B test kit on order.
  2. Measure the hardness of your raw water or get that from the water company/department and plug that into P3
  3. When due for a new regen, check the hardness of the treated water.
  4. If treated water hardness when regen is near is not near zero (1 max) on the Hach 5 B, raise the amount of salt for P4 (3.6 the first raise)
  5. Repeat step 4 a few regenerations until your water is 0 or 1 hardness as you are almost ready for a new regen..
  6. Report how often you regen to see if other steps may be desirable. If you are regenerating every 3 or 4 days, you will probably want to make some changes to p3 and p5 both as I mentioned in post 5. You would like to go a week or more between regens if you can easily do so by raising your salt use to maybe 6 to 1o pounds.
Until you get the hardness kit, you could use other measures to check softness, such as sudsing and feel. But until you get the kit, things are less accurate.
 
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Well I set P4 to 3.5 as it only increments in .5 increments and everything is running great. The regen ran five days ago so I'll test the water hardness before the next regen in eight days.

If I haven't done so already, I want to thank you all for helping me learn my water softener. It's good to finally understand how it works and how to interface it with it. :). Thank you.
 
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