Fleck 5600sxt setting check

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Buckeye84

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Hi All. First time posting on the forums. I've read things on here many times and everyone seems to be so helpful.

I recently installed a Fleck5600stx softener about a month ago. Everything is working fine but I've been noticing in the shower that sometimes the water feels like it goes from soft to harder to soft again (this even happens right after it regens). Maybe it's just in my head, but i was wondering if someone experienced could check my regen settings to make sure they look ok. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Water:
Well water; Hardness: 26 gr/gal; Water goes through iron filter before softener

System:
64,000 gr- 2 cu ft. fine mesh resin; BLFC- 1.0 gpm; DLFC- 2.0 gpm

Household:
2 adults, 2 kids; Use about 120 gal a day so far

My settings:
C: 40
H: 26
SF: 10
DO: 10
BW: 10
BD: 60
RR: 10
BF: 4

I calculated for salt efficiency using the recommended 6# salt/cu ft resin w/ 40k capacity. 12# salt/ 3# salt per gal / 1 gal per min = 4 min for BF. Do my settings look ok?

I'm kinda wondering if maybe it's drawing the brine through too fast during the BD step with 1 gpm BLFC and not getting in full contact with the resin. Seems like most softeners have 0.5 gpm. Or does it matter? The drain line flow is 2gpm.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 

Reach4

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If your iron filter does a good job, you could raise DO to maybe 21.

I would go RS=rc and RC= maybe 130 gallons.

Or you could do a percentage.
 

Buckeye84

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If your iron filter does a good job, you could raise DO to maybe 21.

I would go RS=rc and RC= maybe 130 gallons.

Or you could do a percentage.

Wow that was fast. Thanks Reach4. The iron filter is new too & works well so I will make the changes you suggested. Anyone else have any suggestions?
 

ditttohead

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Double check the flow rate of the BLFC. 1 GPM is not too common and is usually only used on larger systems, not 2 CF. Get a water softness test kit to confirm if the water is soft or hard. Hach 5B is the most common.
 

Buckeye84

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Double check the flow rate of the BLFC. 1 GPM is not too common and is usually only used on larger systems, not 2 CF. Get a water softness test kit to confirm if the water is soft or hard. Hach 5B is the most common.

There's a silver sticker that says 1 gpm where the brine line connects to the control head.
 

Reach4

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Sanity check to make sure you are getting about 4 gallons on the fill.
 

Buckeye84

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I haven't actually measured how much water is coming out during the brine fill. However, the first time i cycled it I used a factory setting of 10 min for BF. It put so much water in the brine tank that the safety float shut it off. So I think 1 gpm is accurate, but I'll look at the button tonight to make sure someone didn't put the wrong sticker on the unit. Also, I'll look & see how much water is in the brine tank. It ran early this morning.
 

Buckeye84

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So the brine tank has about 12" of water in it and salt pellets completely cover the water. Not sure if there's a formula to determine gallons based on 18" diameter tank with pellets? The brine take up is a couple inches above the bottom. I pulled the button out of the BLFC and it says 100 24F. I assume the 100 means 1 gpm. I looked at the fleck manual and one setting on the back says that with a yellow #3 injector you use 1 gpm for BLFC and 2 GPM for DLFC. That's what mine is set up for so I assume it has the #3 injector. So maybe I'm worrying about nothing.

I found an article called Guidelines for Designing Water Softeners. www.wcponline.com/pdf/0304%20Water%20Softners.pdf
According to the article it says the slow rinse cycle should be 3 times longer than the time it takes to draw up the brine. Mine takes 4 minutes with 1 gpm. So that means the cycle could be only be 12 min long. That's seems way to short and I think it will likely result in salty water. But maybe 30 min would be long enough?
 

Reach4

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With no salt, raising the water level by 10 inches in an 18 inch diameter brine tank would be 11 gallons. So what if the space is full of salt also? I dunno.... maybe cut that in half to 5.5 gallons? So maybe the salt occupies more than half of the space. 4 gallons is believable.
 

Mialynette2003

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You are misunderstanding. The slow rinse is the brining cycle. If it draws brine for 20 min than the slow rinse will be 40 min for a total of 60 min.
 

Buckeye84

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You are misunderstanding. The slow rinse is the brining cycle. If it draws brine for 20 min than the slow rinse will be 40 min for a total of 60 min.

But mine has a 1 gpm BLFC with about 4 gal of brine in brine tank. So if it pulls the brine from the brine tank at 1 gpm then it only takes 4 minutes to pull it all out. What i was saying is that according to the article the slow rinse cycle should be 1/3 brine pull and 2/3 slow rinse. Which is what you say too so we're all in agreement. Anyhow, I'm just going to leave the slow rinse at 60 min to be safe. I don't want any salty softened water.
 

Reach4

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I think the BLFC only controls the rate of water going into the brine tank. I think it is the injector that controls the rate of brine draw. I would try to time the brine being drawn from the tank to see how long that takes.
 

Mialynette2003

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The brine draw is at a rate of .33 GPM IIRC. I believe the sticker brine the brine line should say the rate of draw. The BLFC only controls flow into the brine tank.
 

Buckeye84

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Thanks Reach4 & mialynette2003. I learned something new. For some reason I find softeners fascinating.

So it should take 12 minutes to pull my 4 gal of brine. I couldn't find a sticker that said the draw rate. The only one I see is the BLFC rate (1gal/min, 3# salt/min). Now I'm curious though. Why are there different BLFC rates? Why don't they all use 1gpm or more? That would speed up the refill time. Or am I misunderstanding something?
 

Reach4

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Thanks Reach4 & mialynette2003. I learned something new. For some reason I find softeners fascinating.

So it should take 12 minutes to pull my 4 gal of brine. I couldn't find a sticker that said the draw rate. The only one I see is the BLFC rate (1gal/min, 3# salt/min). Now I'm curious though. Why are there different BLFC rates? Why don't they all use 1gpm or more? That would speed up the refill time. Or am I misunderstanding something?
If your controller only lets you program the fill time in whole minutes, the salt dose amounts are more granular. Fortunately the dose that you wanted came out to an even minute for the fill time.

Why doesn't the softener let you set the fill time in seconds or tenths of minutes?
 

Buckeye84

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If your controller only lets you program the fill time in whole minutes, the salt dose amounts are more granular. Fortunately the dose that you wanted came out to an even minute for the fill time.

Why doesn't the softener let you set the fill time in seconds or tenths of minutes?

Oh that makes sense. My 1gpm only allows 3# increments for salt dose since the controller only uses whole minutes for BF. Whereas a .5 would allow half lb increments and a .25 would allow 1/4 lb. But at the expense of it taking longer to run the fill cycle.
 

Buckeye84

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I'm suprsed you have a 1.0 gpm BLFC. With the size system you have, normally it would be a .5 or .25 BLFC.

Me too. There's an order sticker on the underside of the controller that specifies it should be .5 but for some reason they switched it out for 1.0.
 

Reach4

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Oh that makes sense. My 1gpm only allows 3# increments for salt dose since the controller only uses whole minutes for BF. Whereas a .5 would allow half lb increments and a .25 would allow 1/4 lb. But at the expense of it taking longer to run the fill cycle.

The brine refill happens, if I understand correctly, after the softener is out of bypass and is already a functioning softener.
 

ditttohead

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The BLFC only controls the brine fill rate, it has no affect on brine draw. The brine draw is controlled by the injector size. The refill flow control is directional, it moves out of the way during brine draw so it does not restrict brine draw. Brine fill time can be as long as needed. Many systems are now using the .125 GPM BLFC for higher accuracy. A refill time of 45 minutes or more does not matter since the system is in service during the brine fill cycle anyway.
 
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