TL;DR - My softener is not softening after back to back regeneration at the max salt capacity. Verified salt dose, brine tank draw and line, valve not clogged. System is only about 2 years old, and it was bought new, installed by me in our at the time 3 year old home.
Fleck 7000sxt
BLFC : 0.250
cubic ft resin : 1.5
resin: ResinTech GC10 10% CrossLink
tank: 10x54 48k "capacity"
Raw hardness : 18.0 gpg (city municipal water)
Estimated gal/day : 300 GAL (average, I have actually recorded and monitored usage at the Fleck meter)
Settings - Not efficient at all but I want this working first
DF = GAL
VT = df2b
Ct = Fd
C = 48
H = 20
RS = cr
DO = 14
RT = 2:00
B1 = 10
BD = 60
B2 = 5
RR = 10
BF = 30
FM = t1.2
Goals - Eventually for efficiency
salt lb/cuft : 8
soft hardness: 0-3 gpg
need to not kill my recently replaced/rebuilt tankless water heater
Full Story
So I have had quite the journey trying to get my softener working.
1. Resin was coming through the water line after a regen: added a gravel bed to solve this.
2. A leak was dripping from the bypass constantly even after replacing o-rings: replaced the bypass with a new one.
3. Brine was not getting pulled into the tank: pulled and repaired the float valve in the brine tank which had blown at the o-ring and was just pulling air.
This left me to about a week ago. The water was soft for about a day after the brine tank fix and a manual half baked regen which was me putting the tube directly into the brine while I fixed the float valve. The water was hard the next day.
Since it had probably been months over the course of these repairs the resin had not been properly regenerated as well in a long time, I felt the need to fully regen and scrub the system.
To scrub and do a full regen, I estimated there was about 4 gallons of brine in my tank from my previous settings (BF =16 * BLFC .25 = 4) , so I dumped about 5 GAL from a bucket into the tank which should have given me about 9 GAL water * 3 lbs of salt = 27 GAL brine. I pushed the button to do a delayed regen overnight.
Come the next day, my Hach 5b comes in, and the soft water is coming out at a hardness of 22! My raw hardness is 18. Also, the wife says to me that during her shower, the water tasted salty. Sure enough, I taste the water and its got a definite salt taste to it. My only guess is I forgot to extend my old settings for B1=6, B2=3, and RR=5? This was a new problem, so I really was taking a stab in the dark.
I ran a manual regen again, this time skipping both the BD and BF. Salty taste was then gone, but water was testing at my raw hardness of 18 gpg.
I decided to set my softener to the most inefficient settings in an attempt to balance things out again. I set my BF to 30 with my BFLC at .25 which would give me 7.5 GAL * 3 lbs salt = 22.5 GAL of brine for the 1.5 cuft of resin. This is in the settings at the top of my post and are what are currently set.
As of today, I have done two regens over the last few days, and still this morning my tests show maybe 16 or 17 gpg hardness. I have checked, and the brine line is pulling brine and using salt. The fleck brine valve doesn't appear to be clogged or issues with flow.
What can be my next steps to get this working? Any help appreciated!
Fleck 7000sxt
BLFC : 0.250
cubic ft resin : 1.5
resin: ResinTech GC10 10% CrossLink
tank: 10x54 48k "capacity"
Raw hardness : 18.0 gpg (city municipal water)
Estimated gal/day : 300 GAL (average, I have actually recorded and monitored usage at the Fleck meter)
Settings - Not efficient at all but I want this working first
DF = GAL
VT = df2b
Ct = Fd
C = 48
H = 20
RS = cr
DO = 14
RT = 2:00
B1 = 10
BD = 60
B2 = 5
RR = 10
BF = 30
FM = t1.2
Goals - Eventually for efficiency
salt lb/cuft : 8
soft hardness: 0-3 gpg
need to not kill my recently replaced/rebuilt tankless water heater
Full Story
So I have had quite the journey trying to get my softener working.
1. Resin was coming through the water line after a regen: added a gravel bed to solve this.
2. A leak was dripping from the bypass constantly even after replacing o-rings: replaced the bypass with a new one.
3. Brine was not getting pulled into the tank: pulled and repaired the float valve in the brine tank which had blown at the o-ring and was just pulling air.
This left me to about a week ago. The water was soft for about a day after the brine tank fix and a manual half baked regen which was me putting the tube directly into the brine while I fixed the float valve. The water was hard the next day.
Since it had probably been months over the course of these repairs the resin had not been properly regenerated as well in a long time, I felt the need to fully regen and scrub the system.
To scrub and do a full regen, I estimated there was about 4 gallons of brine in my tank from my previous settings (BF =16 * BLFC .25 = 4) , so I dumped about 5 GAL from a bucket into the tank which should have given me about 9 GAL water * 3 lbs of salt = 27 GAL brine. I pushed the button to do a delayed regen overnight.
Come the next day, my Hach 5b comes in, and the soft water is coming out at a hardness of 22! My raw hardness is 18. Also, the wife says to me that during her shower, the water tasted salty. Sure enough, I taste the water and its got a definite salt taste to it. My only guess is I forgot to extend my old settings for B1=6, B2=3, and RR=5? This was a new problem, so I really was taking a stab in the dark.
I ran a manual regen again, this time skipping both the BD and BF. Salty taste was then gone, but water was testing at my raw hardness of 18 gpg.
I decided to set my softener to the most inefficient settings in an attempt to balance things out again. I set my BF to 30 with my BFLC at .25 which would give me 7.5 GAL * 3 lbs salt = 22.5 GAL of brine for the 1.5 cuft of resin. This is in the settings at the top of my post and are what are currently set.
As of today, I have done two regens over the last few days, and still this morning my tests show maybe 16 or 17 gpg hardness. I have checked, and the brine line is pulling brine and using salt. The fleck brine valve doesn't appear to be clogged or issues with flow.
What can be my next steps to get this working? Any help appreciated!