Fleck 7000 Brine Draw Problem

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NeoMoses

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I need some help figuring out why my Fleck 7000 water softener isn't working. The issue I'm having is hard water, it's like my system has zero softening capacity.

This is a 7 year old Fleck 7000 SXT On Demand 48,000 Grain Water Softener I purchased from Discount Water Softeners in 2015. I noticed the hard water breakthrough this fall, and chose to rebed the resin with 1.5 cubic feet of Aldex 10% crosslink resin from Discount Water Softeners. I did the rebed on November 5, 2022.

BLFC: 0.125 GPM
DLFC: 2.4 GPM
Injector: #00 (Violet)

That fixed the issue for a few weeks, but by the beginning of December I noticed the hard water was back. We put up with the hard water through December, but now I have some time to attempt a repair. Apparently the resin bed wasn't the real issue. Before I pay a bunch more money buying parts, I figured it's time to ask for some help.

My system was using some salt, so I didn't initially think it was a brine draw issue. That's why I did the resin replacement. Now that I'm troubleshooting it, I think the brine draw is MUCH lower flow than it should be.

My brine tank has been very full of brine lately, so I think it's refilling more than it's pulling in. Today I did a manual regen and noticed that I only drew down about 1" of the brine from my normal brine tank. The tank is about 14"x15", so I think that was close to 1 gallon of brine over the course of 60 minutes. That seems like way too little Brine Draw. My BD stage is set to 60 minutes.

After that I did another manual regen and used a bucket to measure the brine draw flow rate. I measured that it sucked 1 quart of brine in 8 minutes. By my calculations, that would be 1 gallon every 32 minutes, or 0.03125 Gal/min. My system has a Violet Injector Assembly, the #00 size. As I read the manual, I think that Injector should have a Brine Draw of about 0.18 GPM, and it looks flat from 40-120 psi. Although the measurements may be slightly off, this seems very low.

My well regulates pressure from 40-60 psi, and the softener is within 3 feet of the well pressure tank. I have a 20" Big Blue filter with a DGD2501 filter before the softener that was just replaced on November 5. Pressure should be very good, and whole house pressure/flow has never been a problem.

Currently my BD stage has been set to 60 minutes, so if I'm right about the 0.18 GPM I should be able to pull about 10.8 gallons of brine into the tank.

Tonight I took the valve apart after measuring the brine flow with my bucket method and I didn't see anything abnormal. Some slight rust on the injector assembly and filter, but it was easily cleaned with water and a soft toothbrush. Blowing through the screen and injector showed both were free flowing and not blocked.

The DLFC was removed and it looked very clean. I blew through it as well and it was very easy. It's a 2.4 GPM DLFC. I even removed the existing drain tube and replaced it with a very short section of brand new clear tubing to verify there were no blockages. That didn't seem to help anything. There is a very full, steady stream of flow out the drain tube when regenerating.

The only thing I didn't fully disassemble is the main valve because I don't have a tool to reassemble. I did pull the main piston out, but left all of the seals & spacers in.

After re-assembly, the small amount of suction I had initially is apparently gone. I don't think I'm getting any brine draw now. Whatever is wrong I'm just making it worse, not better. Any thoughts? I don't feel any suction now during Brine Draw when I remove the Brine line and put my finger there.

My guess is that I should replace the Injector Assembly & Screen. I think that is the source of the suction for Brine Draw. Any thoughts? Am I completely off here? Maybe I should put a new O-ring on the BLFC to make sure there's no air leak there?

Thanks for the help, and apologies for the super long post.
 

Reach4

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Clean the injector screen and injector. Replacing would be good too, but cleaning is not much harder than replacing.

Your thought about a vacuum leak was good. If you suspect a vacuum leak, you can slather shaving foam around the brine line connections. The foam would get sucked in during BD if there was a vacuum leak.

If you don't have the service manual, say so. The following is from the troubleshooting section:

Excessive water in brine tank.
Plugged drain line flow control. Clean flow control.
Plugged injector system. Clean injector and screen.
Timer not cycling. Replace timer.
Foreign material in brine valve. Replace brine valve seat and clean valve.
Foreign material in brine line flow control. Clean brine line flow control.
 
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Bannerman

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Injector cleaning directions here: Fleck 7000 Injector Cleaning instructions

Suggest replacing the O ring and lubricate the O ring and piston seals with a food grade silicone lubricant such as Dow Release Compound 7 or Chemplex 862.


Since currently there is a greater amount of brine than usual within the brine tank, also ensure the safety float within the brine tank's Brine Well is not lifted. While the safety valve normally should stop only incoming flow but allow brine to be drawn while the float is raised, there have been prior reports on this forum of the draw rate being reduced/stopped while the float is lifted. You could advance the controller to Brine Draw and push down the float with a stick to to open the safety valve so as to determine if brine will be drawn at a higher flow rate.
 
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NeoMoses

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Thanks for all the replies. I'm pretty sure it turned out to be just a partially plugged injector. Even though I could see through the holes and blow air through them, they must have been slightly plugged.

I took the injector and screen apart and soaked them in a little bit or iron out. I really made sure the screen was clean, then I used a torch tip cleaner (small wire) to push through the orifice on the injector. I felt a little bit of material move when I pushed it through, although nothing really visible came out. After re-assembling, it is working well, so that must have been the problem.

Thanks again for all the help. This has really been a learning experience!
 

NeoMoses

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It has been a couple of weeks now and I've had multiple regenerations and everything seems to be fixed. For anyone encountering this in the future, make sure you run a thin wire through the orifice when cleaning out your injector. That was the true fix. The real symptom was slow brine draw, which led to an increasing water level in the tank. If you see your water level rising, even if you're using some salt, you're probably not fully drawing in your brine. Hope it helps someone next time around. Thanks to all!
 
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