Aquadial Softlife Hi-Tec HIFLOW water softener

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soichiro

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Hi,
I have the above water softener installed, its around 2 years old now.
When i use test strips to check the water it is showing soft, but the water is just not like softened water i had some years ago.
It does not feel that silky, i do get a residue left around the basin, and also the shower walls etc are feeling rough as though scale although you cannot see it is taking hold.
I do notice it when wet shaving, its not that silky.
The water hardness where i live is 350ppm
Any help would be greatl
 

Reach4

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The Hach 5B test is very good. It could measure the residual hardness of your softened water better than test strips. However I don't know how available it is in the UK.
 

soichiro

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Thanks i will look to see if i can find a supplier here
its just not the softened water that i have known in the past, i can never get an answer here as to why or what to do, i did contact where i bought it from, they suggested a resin cleaner, but its only roughly 2 years old, i did not think this was applicable.
 

Reach4

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If you have chlorinated water, there is probably not significant iron in your water. If you are on a private well, I would suspect you have significant iron in your water. While a softener can remove iron, it is harder on the resin and requires cleaning.

Do you show signs of much rust in your toilet tanks of toilets that pre-dated you getting a softener? Iron in the water will foul the the resin. There are resin cleaning solutions sold for the purpose. Before getting my iron+sulfur backwashing filter, I used Iron Out (a powered product easily available here) to treat the resin. It has a smell that is distinctive, but not a very bad smell.

They also have dispensers to dispense a cleaning solution into the brine tank automatically.

Morton here sells regular salt pellets with a little citric acid to help with minor amounts of iron, and they sell a special iron treating version with more citric acid for more rust handling. I usually use their regular pellets, since it is not a premium price.

Another treatment that can help is to give your softener an extra salt dose. You have a cabinet softener, and those are often "brine first" type. Those add the water just a couple hours before the brining. If you add some additional water before a regen, you could get extra salt for the next regen. That can help improve degraded resin. If your softener has a float valve for the brine fill to prevent overflows, that would let you be less careful about adding too much water. It probably has the float, but I don't know.

If you have city water or a water company, maybe you should just adjust your softener to handle harder water by regenerating with more salt each time. If you find the water softer the day after a regen than the day before a regen, that would make sense. Maybe even better is to adjust your softener to regenerate sooner with the same amount of salt it has been using.
 

soichiro

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If you have chlorinated water, there is probably not significant iron in your water. If you are on a private well, I would suspect you have significant iron in your water. While a softener can remove iron, it is harder on the resin and requires cleaning.

Do you show signs of much rust in your toilet tanks of toilets that pre-dated you getting a softener? Iron in the water will foul the the resin. There are resin cleaning solutions sold for the purpose. Before getting my iron+sulfur backwashing filter, I used Iron Out (a powered product easily available here) to treat the resin. It has a smell that is distinctive, but not a very bad smell.

They also have dispensers to dispense a cleaning solution into the brine tank automatically.

Morton here sells regular salt pellets with a little citric acid to help with minor amounts of iron, and they sell a special iron treating version with more citric acid for more rust handling. I usually use their regular pellets, since it is not a premium price.

Another treatment that can help is to give your softener an extra salt dose. You have a cabinet softener, and those are often "brine first" type. Those add the water just a couple hours before the brining. If you add some additional water before a regen, you could get extra salt for the next regen. That can help improve degraded resin. If your softener has a float valve for the brine fill to prevent overflows, that would let you be less careful about adding too much water. It probably has the float, but I don't know.

If you have city water or a water company, maybe you should just adjust your softener to handle harder water by regenerating with more salt each time. If you find the water softer the day after a regen than the day before a regen, that would make sense. Maybe even better is to adjust your softener to regenerate sooner with the same amount of salt it has been using.

Hi,
Many thanks for your quick reply
the water is from the water company via the town main.
the water softener is the metered type which regenerates when needed
i appreciate your help, many thanks.
 

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You can make your own comparative softness test. It is really cheap. Make a liquid soap solution such that one or two or drops added to a jar of water will produce a small amount of suds when shaken. Note the amount and duration of sudsing. The next day, do the same test. If your water loses much softness on subsequent days, I would adjust your softener controller as you would for higher hardness. You could do a test to see how many drops you have to add to see a given amount of sudsing. The Hach 5b, or presumably other titrating type tests, will be calibrated. If you are developing your own sudsing test, that development project could double as a nice science experiment for kids. You could compare the hardness vs rain water, pond water, distilled water, raw city water, and so forth. You could make your own 20.6 ppm hardness calibration solution by mixing 1 part city water with 16 parts of distilled water. I chose 16 because you could measure 1/16 of an amount by dividing in half 4 times. If you had a gram scale, you could use weight to portion out the amounts.

If your salt level is not dropping over time, you could have a "salt bridge". In that case, try to chip your way down in the salt without damaging the softener. Alternatively, add as much water as you dare to try to desolve the upper salt away over time. Then once you are back to adding salt, add less salt to the brine tank in the future, even though you would have to add more frequently.

I like to slope the level of my salt so that after brine fill, some water comes above some salt. With brine-first, that is harder because the water is only filled in the early hours of a regeneration cycle.

You have an all-in-1/cabinet type softener. Most of us are familiar with the systems with a separate brine tank. The cabinet type seem to be more of an item that gets replaced rather than repaired. But there are those who can repair cabinet types too.
 

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It would be helpful if you posted your softener's settings as they can then be reviewed to ensure they are appropriate for your water conditions and consumption requirements. Photos of the control valve settings would be good.

350ppm = (350 / 17.1) = 20.47 grains per US gallon (3.78541 litres). How was that amount determined and how recent was the water tested?

If there are no other contaminants the softener needs to deal with, then the softener should be programmed for 21 grains. This will then need to correspond to your average household water consumption as well as the set regeneration capacity of the softener which relates to total capacity. Water consumption if unknown, is often estimated by the number of occupants. Contaminants which utilize softening capacity include iron and manganese as well as normal hardness (calcium and magnesium).

As your water is municipal, I expect that the water is chlorinated but that should be confirmed since the UK may proceed differently than routine procedure in North America. Chlorine will oxidize iron and manganese, converting each to another form which can be filtered out and will no longer utilize softening capacity.

Do you know the total capacity of the softener? (ie: grains or cu/ft) If not, that maybe calculated by the physical size of the media tank.

By your description, it appears that softening ability has slowly declined over the past 2 years. It could be that your initial softener program was not quite set optimally, so all of the capacity that is being utilized, is not being restored during regeneration. As there often is some additional capacity remaining unused in the softener, this will also have been slowly utilized until depleted.

It maybe that your water is being obtained from more than one well, with some of those wells being harder than others so that programming for harder than 21 grains is necessary.
 

soichiro

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Many thanks
i will get all the relevant info together and get back to you at sometime
your help is very much appreciated.
 

soichiro

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It would be helpful if you posted your softener's settings as they can then be reviewed to ensure they are appropriate for your water conditions and consumption requirements. Photos of the control valve settings would be good.

350ppm = (350 / 17.1) = 20.47 grains per US gallon (3.78541 litres). How was that amount determined and how recent was the water tested?

If there are no other contaminants the softener needs to deal with, then the softener should be programmed for 21 grains. This will then need to correspond to your average household water consumption as well as the set regeneration capacity of the softener which relates to total capacity. Water consumption if unknown, is often estimated by the number of occupants. Contaminants which utilize softening capacity include iron and manganese as well as normal hardness (calcium and magnesium).

As your water is municipal, I expect that the water is chlorinated but that should be confirmed since the UK may proceed differently than routine procedure in North America. Chlorine will oxidize iron and manganese, converting each to another form which can be filtered out and will no longer utilize softening capacity.

Do you know the total capacity of the softener? (ie: grains or cu/ft) If not, that maybe calculated by the physical size of the media tank.

By your description, it appears that softening ability has slowly declined over the past 2 years. It could be that your initial softener program was not quite set optimally, so all of the capacity that is being utilized, is not being restored during regeneration. As there often is some additional capacity remaining unused in the softener, this will also have been slowly utilized until depleted.

It maybe that your water is being obtained from more than one well, with some of those wells being harder than others so that programming for harder than 21 grains is necessary.
Hi
this is the settings and specs of the softener, hardness is set to 360, it is the 10 litre model.
There are 2 people in the house
water soft specs.JPG
water softener .JPG

many thanks.
 

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10 liters is 0.353 cubic ft. I presume that is the resin volume.
0.84 kg is 1.85188 lb. salt used per regeneration
That would be 5.25 lb of salt per cubic ft of resin.

I am very surprised by the second sentence of the notes.
 

soichiro

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10 liters is 0.353 cubic ft. I presume that is the resin volume.
0.84 kg is 1.85188 lb. salt used per regeneration
That would be 5.25 lb of salt per cubic ft of resin.

I am very surprised by the second sentence of the notes.

Yes, just 2 of us here
would you advise leaving hardness set at 360 ?
thanks
 

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I would go higher until you get the sensitive hardness test that can measure the hardness a day before the regeneration is to occur. You are thinking there is significant hardness leaking through. Raising the hardness setting is something you can do. If you could raise the salt used per regeneration by maybe 20% instead, that might be a good alternative.

Have you tried the soap test, and can you tell a difference in hardness the day after regen vs later times? You want soap for this job, and not detergent. There may be pharmaceutical soap available from your local chemist. Tattoo parlors often use such soap.
 

soichiro

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I would go higher until you get the sensitive hardness test that can measure the hardness a day before the regeneration is to occur. You are thinking there is significant hardness leaking through. Raising the hardness setting is something you can do. If you could raise the salt used per regeneration by maybe 20% instead, that might be a good alternative.

Have you tried the soap test, and can you tell a difference in hardness the day after regen vs later times? You want soap for this job, and not detergent. There may be pharmaceutical soap available from your local chemist. Tattoo parlors often use such soap.
ok thanks
i will raise the hardness a little
not sure about the salt used per generation i only have the user handbook no technical info as to settings
thanks again
 

Bannerman

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What is surprising is a minimum flow rate of 10 Litres/min, especially with such a small capacity softener.

While the 'Notes' section indicates that a flow rate under 10 L/min may not have all hardness removed, I suspect in actuality, the metering may not be detecting flow below that rate. As many household activities require less than 10 L/min, especially with newer water conserving fixtures, the softener meter is probably not detecting that lower flow volume, resulting in the softener's programmed capacity being exceeded before regeneration is eventually initiated.

Since there should normally be additional capacity which is utilized for supporting higher rates of flow, once that additional capacity has been depleted, the softener can no longer provide fully soft water at a higher flow rate (ie: 30 L/min continuous) as hardness will break through.

As it appears the 10 Litre/min flow rate cannot be altered, it seems that you need to either live with that restriction or, replace the unit with one that will function at a lower rate of flow. You may wish to contact Culligan to ask if your unit's meter can be exchanged with one which can detect a lower flow rate.

With regard to the hardness setting, I expect that your unit is already regenerating every 2 days, maybe 3 days at most. Unless the hardness setting is raised substantially enough to result in regeneration occurring 1 day sooner, there is little to be gained initially in raising the setting.

Your unit is using a very low amount of salt per cu.ft so as to restore only the capacity programmed as detected by the meter as being used. To restore additional capacity which should also increase the fully softened flow rate, you may need to periodically perform two or three manual regenerations with no water use between.

While the first manual regen will replace the next automatic one, the second regen will restore more capacity beyond that which is programmed. The third regeneration should restore virtually all of the softener's remaining capacity.

Manual regenerations may need to be performed every few months but I suggest trying it immediately to check if your water feels softer afterwards, just as you initially experienced.

Edited to add: If you have a tank type water heater, it may take a few days before that water is consumed and before you experience much change in softness.
 
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soichiro

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What is surprising is a minimum flow rate of 10 Litres/min, especially with such a small capacity softener.

While the 'Notes' section indicates that a flow rate under 10 L/min may not have all hardness removed, I suspect in actuality, the metering may not be detecting flow below that rate. As many household activities require less than 10 L/min, especially with newer water conserving fixtures, the softener meter is probably not detecting that lower flow volume, resulting in the softener's programmed capacity being exceeded before regeneration is eventually initiated.

Since there should normally be additional capacity which is utilized for supporting higher rates of flow, once that additional capacity has been depleted, the softener can no longer provide fully soft water at a higher flow rate (ie: 30 L/min continuous) as hardness will break through.

As it appears the 10 Litre/min flow rate cannot be altered, it seems that you need to either live with that restriction or, replace the unit with one that will function at a lower rate of flow. You may wish to contact Culligan to ask if your unit's meter can be exchanged with one which can detect a lower flow rate.

With regard to the hardness setting, I expect that your unit is already regenerating every 2 days, maybe 3 days at most. Unless the hardness setting is raised substantially enough to result in regeneration occurring 1 day sooner, there is little to be gained initially in raising the setting.

Your unit is using a very low amount of salt per cu.ft so as to restore only the capacity programmed as detected by the meter as being used. To restore additional capacity which should also increase the fully softened flow rate, you may need to periodically perform two or three manual regenerations with no water use between.

While the first manual regen will replace the next automatic one, the second regen will restore more capacity beyond that which is programmed. The third regeneration should restore virtually all of the softener's remaining capacity.

Manual regenerations may need to be performed every few months but I suggest trying it immediately to check if your water feels softer afterwards, just as you initially experienced.

Edited to add: If you have a tank type water heater, it may take a few days before that water is consumed and before you experience much change in softness.

Hi,
many thanks for your thoughts on this.
Its only a thought, i installed the softener myself, i used the standard hoses that came with it.
I have a combi boiler and the manufacturer does advice to fit the full bore valves when a combi boiler is to be supplied by the softener.
I have never had any problems thats why i did not bother
 

Bannerman

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The minimum flow rating discussed, is that indicated on the specification table for your softener as designed. That specification is not in reference to your combi boiler although I agree, full bore valves do not restrict flow as much as other types. If the valves you installed were those included with the softener, the softener should be receiving at least the minimum amount of flow that it requires.

I mention the water heater only as many store large volumes of water. When testing if the multiple manual regenerations will make a difference, particularly when showering, it may take a few days for the existing water in the tank to be replaced.
 
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soichiro

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The minimum flow rating discussed, is that indicated on the specification table for your softener as designed. That specification is not in reference to your combi boiler although I agree, full bore valves do not restrict flow as much as other types. If the valves you installed were those included with the softener, the softener should be receiving at least the minimum amount of flow that it requires.

I mention the water heater only as many store large volumes of water. When testing if the multiple manual regenerations will make a difference, particularly when showering, it may take a few days for the existing water in the tank to be replaced.

hi thanks again, its a very interesting subject, unfortunately here in the UK, there are not too many people willing to help, i did contact the supplier of the softener a while ago, he suggested a resin cleaner, i pointed out it was quite new, but he seemed to think it would help, i purchased, put in brine tank it made no difference.
The combi boiler has a small plate hate exchanger for hot water, i do not have any storage tanks hot or cold in the house, everything is town main.
 
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