Fleck 5600 STX Valve and AIO Filter set up

[Civrel]

First, my water:

Well

Calcium Hardness: 21 gpg

Iron: 1 ppm

Hydrogen Sulfide: <1 ppm

System:

Fleck 5600 STX Valve

48,000 grain (1.5 cf)

1/2 CF AIO Filter

My problem:

With all of this I am still getting some hydrogen sulfide and iron in the house. Also, the water does not feel soft, but the post system water turns pink to blue with the first drop using the Hatch test kit. It takes 21 drops for raw water.

The set up on the 5600 STX Valve is as follows:

DF – Gal

VT - df1b

CT – Fd

NT -1

C – 24 x 1000 (should be 48?)

H – 33 (should be about 24?)

RS – SF

SF – 15

DO – 5

RT 2:00

BW – 10

BD – 60

RR – 16

My brine tank also always has about 18” t0 20” of water in it.

It seems like when the softener regenerates at night, the next morning we get a flush of blackish water (iron sulfide?). There are no adjustments on the AIO filter. When I back wash the AIO, the water is clear from start to finish. I installed the AIO after the softener, should I have installed the AIO filter before the softner?

 

[Reach4]

C – 24 x 1000 (should be 48?)

H – 33 (should be about 24?)

No and No for now.

I installed the AIO after the softener, should I have installed the AIO filter before the softner?

Most probably. What media is in the AIO filter?

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Bannerman]

The Air Injection Oxidation filter is to reduce iron and eliminate sulfur odor. That filter should be before the softener. Once in the correct order, the softener will no longer be exposed to iron so the softener can then be reprogrammed for your actual 'total' hardness plus add 2-3 gpg in case of variance through the AIO.

When you say Hach test, is that a Hach 5B?

What is the BF setting and what is the BLFC number (should be specified on a label near the brine port)?

When you say 'always has 18-20" of water', does the level go down during the BD cycle?

 

[Civrel]

The media in the AIO is supposed to be Centaur catalytic carbon

Yes, I used the Hatch 5B to measure the calcium hardness and a WaterWorks H2S test strip to test the hydrogen sulfide.

The BF setting is 10 minutes and the orifice is a 0.5 gpm (1.5 lbs salt/min). I have not watched the system go through a full cycle, but the salt level constantly decreases over a couple of weeks.

I am currently using a combination of one regular 60 lb bag of pellets and one 60 lb bag Iron Out pellets. I go through the two bags in about 6 weeks using the setting above. I have heard different opinions regarding the use of pellets over coarse crystals and vice versa. One service person said alternate between regular pellets and iron-out pellets because the regular pellets contain citric acid and iron-out pellets do not. I could not find anything to back that claim up. Another said not to use iron-out pellets at all, as the damage the head. Again. I could not find anything to back up that claim.

And after a long day in the hot sun yesterday and fielding numerous complaints about the water, I realized that I made an error in my original post. The AIO is before the softener, not after as indicated above. I cycled the AIO and the backwash rate appears good and will fill a 5-gallon bucket in about a minute.

I am currently running the softener through a regeneration cycle. The BD cycle drains the brine tank at 24 minutes into the 60 minute cycle and sucks air through the remaining 36 minutes of the cycle. It appears that the BF cycle (10 minutes) is too short and/or the BD (60 minutes) is too long and I am not properly regenerating the resin?

Looks like AIO has a 15 minute backwash, 40 minute air draw and rapid rinse of 1 minute.

 

[Reach4]

The media in the AIO is supposed to be Centaur catalytic carbon

0.5 cuft is not much. My 1.5 cuft Centaur Carbon (no air, but chlorine solution during regen) has a 10x54 inch tank. It uses a 5 GPM backwash. So if you really have an 8 inch or smaller tank, the 5 GPM would be excessive. Is this fairly new? Centaur Carbon is good for something like 8 years I think, but that would vary I expect.

It's good that your iron+H2S filter is before the softener.

I am currently running the softener through a regeneration cycle. The BD cycle drains the brine tank at 24 minutes into the 60 minute cycle and sucks air through the remaining 36 minutes of the cycle. It appears that the BF cycle (10 minutes) is too short and/or the BD (60 minutes) is too long and I am not properly regenerating the resin?

The symptom of the BD cycle not being long enough is salty treated water.

BF determines how much salt gets used for each regeneration.

Your current BF causes you to use 10 pounds of salt for every cubic ft of resin, or 15 pounds total. That should give C=40.5. Your current C=24 is set to make you regen more often than normal. When things are working, that can be adjusted to use less salt. But for now, your using more salt than you should need to could be helping the situation. Yet the situation-- I don't understand. The Hach 5-B shows less than 1 grain of softness. The symptoms are iron appearance, and H2S smell.

The H2S will not be helped by a softener. Is the H2S considerably worse for hot water vs cold?

It seems like when the softener regenerates at night, the next morning we get a flush of blackish water (iron sulfide?).

Tell us more about that. Are you saying that the material shows up in the toilet or tub, or are you somehow inspecting the drain water from the softener?

 

[Civrel]

Cleaned the sludge/mush our of the bottom of the brine tank and ran BF mode (10 minutes) and did the calculations and came in right at 5 gallons at 0.5 gpm fill rate.

If that same rate is the draw rate, I would be drawing 30 gallons of brine from the brine tank. While I realize that of the 30 gallons of brine drawn from the brine tank, not all is water, but dissolved salt, it would appear that I need to add a significant amount of time to the BF setting, but first I think I need to adjust to BD setting based on the amount of brine I need to adequately regenerate the system.

How do I calculate the amount of salt I need from the brine tank (1.5 lbs/minute) for the chemical parameters of the water I posted above? There are 2 to 4 people in the residence at any one time, so an average of 3 would probably work. I thought I read somewhere there is a way to set the valve for salt efficiency and a way to set the valve for maximum recharge with a much higher salt use. While I don't want to go broke buying salt, I do want to make sure that the regeneration efficiency is sufficient to consistently treat the water.

 

[Civrel]

The gray mineral deposit typically shows up in the toilet after the first flush in the morning then settles on the bowl as a thin covering easily brushed away. This doesn't happen every day, but maybe once a week. I assume after a regeneration cycle earlier that night.

 

[Bannerman]

You are not understanding how a softener works.
The BLFC does not control the brine draw rate, only the brine fill rate. Brine draw is controlled by the injector and will be much slower than brine fill.

The BD function is actually two functions in the same setting. Drawing brine will typically be 1/4 of the programmed time whereas 3/4 of the programmed time will be a slow rinse to push the brine through the resin and rinse the brine from the resin bed.

Once the brine is drawn from the brine tank, then an air check valve (floating ball) should close the brine pickup opening to prevent air from being drawn. If air is actually being drawn, then there is a problem with the air check and that will need to be remedied.

If the water after regeneration is salty tasting, that would signify the BD setting is too short. If it is taking 24 minutes to draw brine, suggest then increasing the BD setting to 96-100 minutes

 

[Bannerman]

Salt efficiency is the relationship of the amount of usable capacity regenerated vs the amount of salt needed to regenerate that capacity.

Salt efficiency can be increased by regenerating when a smaller amount of capacity has been utilized and while using a lessor amount of salt as specified below. The smaller salt dose will be slightly more salt efficient whereas the higher salt dose will provide somewhat higher quality water. For your 1.5 cuft softener, the following settings are appropriate

9 lbs salt > 30 K usable capacity 'C'' = 3,333 grains/lb salt efficiency
12 lbs salt > 36K usable capacity 'C'= 3,000 grains/lb salt efficiency

Each 1 gallon added to the brine tank will dissolve 3 lbs salt.

 

[Bannerman]

The reason I asked about which test kit is because you specify 'calcium' hardness. That type of hardness is typically a concern for swimming pool testing whereas 'total' hardness is what needs to be measured when programming a water softener.

because the regular pellets contain citric acid and iron-out pellets do not.

Actually, the other way around. The iron cleaning salt contains a small amount of citric acid which will be of no harm if used constantly.

 

[Reach4]

Civrel, how old are your filter and softener? If you are handling iron with a softener, you need extra cleaning-- not just using the iron handling salt.

Your settings are not very efficient, but even with your settings that cause a lot of salt use, you have odd symptoms.
Dealing with your hardness and 1 ppm of iron, but without your black stuff, I would have thought these settings below would be good:

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
Raw hardness = 30 ; including any compensation
People = 3 ; gallons affects reserve calc
Estimated gal/day = 180 ; 60 gal per person typical calc
Estimated days/regen = 6.7 ; Computed days ignoring reserve
Fleck 5600SXT Settings:
DF = Gal ; Units
VT = dF1b ; Downflw/Upflw, Single Backwash
CT = Fd ; Meter Delayed regen trigger
NT = 1 ; Number of tanks
C = 36.0 ; capacity in 1000 grains
H = 30 ; Hardness-- compensate if needed
RS = rc ; rc says use gallons vs percent
RC = 180 ; Reserve capacity gallons
DO = 7 ; Day Override (due to 1 ppm 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

1/2 CF AIO Filter

I would like to see dimension measurements for the filter tank. What are the dimensions?

 

[Bannerman]

That is how I interpreted this:

I eventually found where he specified the filter media quantity, and so I removed my comment.
Yes 0.5 cuft is quite low so there maybe some iron leakage occurring through the AIO filter. He should monitor for iron leakage after the AIO but before the softener.

I expect the filter tank will need to be somewhat larger than usual for the media contained, to allow enough room for an adequate air pocket. I don't recall him specifying the frequency of AIO backwash. He also didn't specify the control valve on the AIO system but did state there are no adjustments, leading me to suspect that it is not a Fleck valve.

If the salt dose is reduced to where drawing brine is approx 15 minutes, then the BD setting could be restored to 60 minutes. The 96 minutes I recommended is due to his statement that drawing brine is taking 24 minutes and also that there is 'blackish' water following regeneration.

 

[Reach4]

I expect the filter tank will need to be somewhat larger than usual for the media contained, to allow enough room for an adequate air pocket. I don't recall him specifying the frequency of AIO backwash.

It will be interesting to see the dimensions.

The 96 minutes I recommended is due to his statement that drawing brine is taking 24 minutes and also that there is 'blackish' water following regeneration.

My numbers above were for a fairly normal setup. For all we know he has a softener that has not had its injector, screen, or other stuff cleaned for 6 years.

 

[ditttohead]

AIO systems are unique but also require some regular maintenance. The air injection causes considerable iron precipitation inside the injection assembly. This should be removed and cleaned regularly to determine the frequency. I have seen these foul up in as little as a month, other times it will last up to a year. Catalytic GAC will need regular replacement especially if you are using it in this small of a quantity. The minimum recommended size for a residential application is typically 1.5 CF or 3X larger than your current system.
We distribute many AIO systems but they are typically higher maintenance and lower performing than many other system types. Their advantage is the low cost and simplicity but in my opinion there are many better system designs available.

 

[Civrel]

OK, the AIO is 54" x 10" and runs with a Fleck 2510 and is a 1 CF unit. I had typed 1 1/2 and deleted the 1 instead of the 1/2. Sorry.

Once the brine is drawn from the brine tank, then an air check valve (floating ball) should close the brine pickup opening to prevent air from being drawn. If air is actually being drawn, then there is a problem with the air check and that will need to be remedied.

Yes, the valve keeps drawing air after the brine is depleted from the brine tank. Where is the check valve located?

The AIO is 2 months old and the softener is just a little over a year old.

The AIO backwashes every three days.

 

[Bannerman]

Where is the check valve located?

At the bottom of the brine tank, typically located within a cover with screen holes. To service, the entire brine pickup assembly including safety float, can usually be removed from within the brine well tube.

Photo example: http://www.softenerparts.com/Brine_Pick_Up_Tube_with_Air_Check_60002_p/fp60002.htm

 

[ditttohead]

The softener should not draw air after the brine is removed. The air check is in the bottom of the brine tank. If it is drawing air then it has failed. Post a picture. If you have one of the cheap import brine tanks, then the air check will need to be replaced with a good one. If the brine tank is either a Pentair or Clack then a simple cleaning should suffice. It is usually a piece of string from the salt bag or a similar problem causing the system to suck air.

 

[Civrel]

Found the check valve ad is identical to the Brine Pick Up Tube with Air Check 60002 shown in the link by Bannerman. I removed the float assembly and check valve from the brine well, cleaned in. The ball rolls freely inside and when I try and suck air through the brine tube connection, I cannot. Maybe the cleaning worked?

 

[ditttohead]

Sounds good. It is a simple design and it only takes a tiny bit of debris to cause it to leak air. Congrats.

 

[Civrel]

Dittohead, you had mentioned that the AIO valve is easily fouled with iron. How is the fouling removed and where should I look? I have disassembled and cleaned various Kinetico and Ecowater valves, then reassembled with no left over parts. What chemical would be used to remove the iron build-up? Thanks.