Fleck 5600sxt questions

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Reach4

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Do you have a 12" x 52" or 13" x 54" tank, or what? To measure the diameter, you can measure the circumference with a string, and divide by 3.14.

Well water I presume. You want to get a Hach 5-B to measure softness for both raw water and softened water.

Are you saying that your test strips seem to show your softened water to be 7-15 gpg?

Make sure you test the cold, rather than hot, because there is a delay in the water working its way through the WH tank.
 

Reach4

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Most 5600SXT softeners have a 0.5 gpm BLFC. You could check, because you could be an exception.

You have presumably been using a lot of salt. So if you are not getting softening, check to make sure that your bypass valve is not in the bypass condition. Otherwise lack of softness is not a setting problem for you. If you are not getting soft water, I suspect you have a hardware problem. Do you know how often you regenerate? How old is your system? How much water is in the brine tank, and does it get sucked out during the BD cycle? That is worth checking. It should get sucked out about 15 minutes into the BD cycle.

Until you get your hardness kit, I suggest these:

System info (not programmed)
salt lb/cuft = 8 ; A choice ( efficiency vs capacity)
BLFC = 0.5 ; Brine Refill rate GPM
cubic ft resin = 1.5 ; ft3 resin = (nominal grains)/32,000
Compensated hardness = 16 ; including any compensation
People = 2 ; gallons affects calculation for the RC setting
Estimated gal/day = 120 ; 60 gal per person typical calc
Estimated days/regen = 18.75 ; Computed days including reserve

Fleck 5600SXT Settings:
DF = Gal ; Units
VT = dF1b ; Downflw/, Single Backwash, black cam
CT = Fd ; Meter Delayed regen trigger
NT = 1 ; Number of tanks
C = 36.0 ; capacity in 1000 grains
H = 16 ; Hardness-- compensate if needed
RS = rc ; rc says use gallons vs percent
RC = 120 ; Reserve capacity gallons
DO = 30 ; Day Override (28 if no iron)
RT = 2:00 ; Regen time (default 2 AM)
BW = 5 ; Backwash (minutes)
Bd = 60 ; Brine draw minutes
RR = 5 ; Rapid Rinse minutes
BF = 8 ; Brine fill minutes
FM = ____0.7 ; https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?attachments/img_fleck5600sxt_flow-png.31592/
 

Reach4

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The recent #'s I gave you caused the brine tank to fill with water about 2 feet high. (Is that too high?)
It's high enough that it might have been the brine safety float that limited the fill.
When does the BD cycle start? Right away? I can do a re-gen when the family is sleeping and check.
It starts after the backwash (BW).
 

Reach4

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What should I do about the water level-or will your settings change this?
I would just watch without removing the excess water. The brine will probably take longer than the 15 minutes to get drawn out. I am wondering if it gets drawn out at all, since you are experiencing insufficient softening. See how far it gets and in what time.
 

Bannerman

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It is not clear if the 7-15 gpg is the hardness of the unsoftened raw water, or of the softened water.

A 10" X 54" resin tank is appropriate for 1.5 cubic feet of resin. 1.5 ft3 resin has a total softening capacity of 48,000, not 53,000 grains. The resin's total capacity is not the Capacity setting that is to be programmed. For 1.5 ft3 resin, the usually recommended Capacity setting is 36,000 grains which will require only 12 lbs salt per regeneration cycle which Reach4 has indicated in post #5 above.

Your initial 21 minute Brine Fill setting X 0.5 gpm BLFC = 10.5 gallons of water that entered the brine tank. 10.5 gallons will dissolve 31.5 lbs salt. As mentioned above, the amount of fluid in the brine tank could be less than 10.5 gallons if the fluid level in the brine tank became too high which caused the safety float to be raised during brine fill.

To draw in all of the brine currently in the brine tank, recommend confirming the brine level is lowering during Brine Draw. Once it becomes obvious the brine level is dropping, unplug the electrical feed to the softener for approx 2 hours to allow extra time to draw the extra quantity of brine and provide sufficient time to rinse the resin. After the 2 hours, resume electrical service to allow the softener to automatically complete the remainder of the regeneration cycle.
 
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Bannerman

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The purpose for extending the BD and Slow Rinse time (both functions are combined as 'Brine Draw') this time, is to ensure sufficient time for the large amount of brine to be transferred to the resin tank so the brine will have ample opportunity to regenerate the resin's capacity and also, to ensure there will be sufficient time to thoroughly rinse the resin afterward. If the slow rinse time is insufficient, the water will remain salty directly following regeneration.

Because 1.5 ft3 of resin has a maximum capacity of 48,000 grains, programming 53,000 grains means regeneration was occuring well after all of the resin's capacity had been depleted.
 

Reach4

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I update my settings back on the day you told me to.
Are those settings a good balance for salt use and softness?
Usually. Watch the display gallons remaining, and when it is getting low, test your water with your Hach 5-B test. If the hardness is such that one drop turns the sample blue, then you are doing well. If you start getting hardness as the countdown gets low, some compensating adjustments would be called for.

Does it feel nice?
 
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