Custom water softener setup questions

[Hatsuwr]

Hi everyone, I'm thinking of going with a custom water softener setup rather than one of the ready to go units.

I'm thinking:

Twin tank setup, but with both tanks generally in operation at the same time. Regeneration would be offset so soft water would always be available.

• 2x 10"x54" Vortech Tanks
• 2x Fleck 5800 LXT or SXT Control Valves
• Purolite Shallow Shell Resin - 1.5 cubic feet per tank.

Anyone have thoughts or advice about this route? I'd like to get the SSTPPC8000E resin, but I only see SST-60 for sale online.

Thanks!

 

[Reach4]

Twin tank setup, but with both tanks generally in operation at the same time. Regeneration would be offset so soft water would always be available.

Unusual. Usually that would be done with a dual tank softener with one controller. The Fleck 9100 does that, but you may be wanting a newer design. The 9100 seems worth considering.

I presume you plan to put these in series, so the second softener will seldom see hardness to deal with. If you put them in parallel, the softener being regenerated would be passing unsoftened water. There may be a way to have the regenerating softener not bypass. It may require different hardware. I don't know.

 

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[Hatsuwr]

Forgot to mention, iron is ~10 ppm, hardness ~10 gpg.

The 9100 was very high on my list for a while. The two downsides for me were that it doesn't do upflow regeneration and it only has one tank in service at a time.
On the other hand, it regenerates with soft water, is simpler, and much cheaper...

I was actually wondering why twin tank controllers only have one tank in service at a time. It seems like you could get much better flow rates at a given pressure while still softening effectively by using both tanks except when one is regenerating...

I was planning on having them in parallel though. One selling point for the 5800 is that I think it stops service flow while regenerating... I could be wrong about that though, I couldn't find much solid info there. If it doesn't, I'd hopefully find some way to make it. The SXT controller has relay outputs which I'd guess could be programmed to close a valve while regenerating?

 

[Reach4]

Forgot to mention, iron is ~10 ppm, hardness ~10 gpg.

10 ppm iron is huge. You don't want to have a softener deal with that. You need a backwashing iron filter to deal with that, and let the softener do what it does best.

 

[Hatsuwr]

Oh, this is part of a much bigger setup, I posted the rest here:

https://terrylove.com/forums/index....ice-pictures-model-and-parts-list-insi.74648/

I have twin 10"x54" Katalox Light filled tanks for iron and some sediment removal.

 

[Reach4]

Looking at your picture, it looks like the units are in parallel.

 

[Hatsuwr]

Yup!

 

[Reach4]

I was planning on having them in parallel though. One selling point for the 5800 is that I think it stops service flow while regenerating... I could be wrong about that though, I couldn't find much solid info there. If it doesn't, I'd hopefully find some way to make it.

I see the feature you want is called "No Hard Water Bypass".

The 5810+5812sxt manual says

NOTE: Install plug in hole "A" for units that allow hard
water to flow during regeneration. For no hard water
bypass (downflow only), install plug in hole "B". See
illustration below.​

The 5810+5812xtr manual says

Downflow No Hard Water Bypass is available for 5812 only​

So can the 5810SXT have NHWB? I don't know more than what the manual says on that.

Is it that important that you not have hard water bypassing between 2:15 am and 3:45 am every week or two? Because if you gave that up, you could use with 2.5 or 3 cubic ft of resin in a single softener tank. Then you save space. Note that during brine refill the units are never in bypass. They are normally in bypass during backwashes, rinse and brine draw cycles however.

I presume you plan to have the Fleck regular softener bypass valves in place. You will find those stick out the back some. I used the Fleck 61992 elbows to put my tank closer to the wall. I could have spared the space, but I just traded some vertical for horizontal.

 

[ditttohead]

NHWBP is not available yet for the 5812. It is in the works, no release date yet.

If you are already removing the iron sufficiently then don't bother with SST resin, just stick with a good high quality 10% crosslink resin. At 10 PPM I would highly recommend a simple h2o2 injection. What I really need is the water analysis.

 

[Hatsuwr]

I see the feature you want is called "No Hard Water Bypass".

The 5810+5812sxt manual says

NOTE: Install plug in hole "A" for units that allow hard
water to flow during regeneration. For no hard water
bypass (downflow only), install plug in hole "B". See
illustration below.​

The 5810+5812xtr manual says

Downflow No Hard Water Bypass is available for 5812 only​

So can the 5810SXT have NHWB? I don't know more than what the manual says on that.

Is it that important that you not have hard water bypassing between 2:15 am and 3:45 am every week or two? Because if you gave that up, you could use with 2.5 or 3 cubic ft of resin in a single softener tank. Then you save space. Note that during brine refill the units are never in bypass. They are normally in bypass during backwashes, rinse and brine draw cycles however.

I presume you plan to have the Fleck regular softener bypass valves in place. You will find those stick out the back some. I used the Fleck 61992 elbows to put my tank closer to the wall. I could have spared the space, but I just traded some vertical for horizontal.

NHWBP is not available yet for the 5812. It is in the works, no release date yet.

If you are already removing the iron sufficiently then don't bother with SST resin, just stick with a good high quality 10% crosslink resin. At 10 PPM I would highly recommend a simple h2o2 injection. What I really need is the water analysis.

Ah, ok so maybe I'll have to rig this together myself? Especially if I want upflow regen. You are right that it's not a huge priority though.

Single tank would be tempting... Any other downsides besides obviously having to go without soft water during regeneration?

As far as the bypass valves, I was planning on using the yokes and a few union ball valves to make my own. Would end up protruding a similar amount though. I didn't even know they had elbows for that - horizontal space is at a premium here so that might be very useful.

Water analysis is coming... I even have records going back a couple decades, but I chose a terrible time to misplace them.

Why 10% crosslink over the SST? That was my original plan, from Resintech.

 

[Reach4]

Single tank would be tempting... Any other downsides besides obviously having to go without soft water during regeneration?

A 1.5 cuft tank can soften up to about 12 gpm. Your KL system with a little H2O2 takes out the iron. With 10 grains of hardness, and adding 10% extra to 11 grains, with 4 people, 1.5 cuft would regenerate about every 13 days. So no need to go to a bigger tank.

A little hardness getting thru when you flush a toilet a couple times in the middle of the night during an 80 minute window of regeneration every 2 weeks is not significant at all.

 

[Hatsuwr]

That's definitely something to consider... Another thread made me realized I forgot to look into stacked tank systems, or the mid-Vortech tanks. Any thoughts on those? I emailed the makers of KL to see if there was any problem with the softener regenerate interacting with the KL but no reply yet,

 

[Reach4]

That's definitely something to consider... Another thread made me realized I forgot to look into stacked tank systems,

The KL gets regenerated every 3 days typically I think.

Softener will regen much less frequently. So having a separate controller for KL and softening is the much better thing.

 

[ditttohead]

stacked tank KL and softener are ideal for high hardness and low iron application,. Otherwise separate tanks are ideal. Don't overthink the design and ignore most of the "marketing" garbage.