Forklifting my water treatment system

[Reach4]

The way I interpret the following, the water still goes to the outlet during fast rinse.

If there is an open faucet you could get flow. The unit is in bypass, so in and out are connected.

 

[LLigetfa]

I could use a bypass valve position to shut off the water to the softener and subsequently the entire house. Then the only path that the air/water can take is down the drain.

Afterwards when putting the iron filter back into service, I need to take care filling it slowly to displace the air as that would need to be done in backwash mode. Alternately, I could pre-fill it prior to putting the head back on.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[LLigetfa]

Recently I've had problems where the top basket is getting clogged, reducing the backwash flowrate. This could be observed by the sound and the pressure not dropping as low during backwash. I attribute the wife's heavy water use for irrigation during a recent drought to too much iron buildup between backwashing leading to failure to properly backwash. By manually alternating between backwash and fast rinse, introducing air during the fast rinse, I managed to restore the flow and filter bed to normal without having to physically remove the head to clean the top basket. It is still a stop-gap measure as I will need to eventually remove the head for a proper cleaning. I also need to measure the freeboard to see how much media I may have lost to drain.

I asked my water guy about installing the hold-down but he thinks it will just make it harder to remove the bottom basket for cleaning. Not sure how often the bottom basket needs to be cleaned. I was hoping not to have to do more than just pull off the head and only clean the top basket.

If I dump out all the media to clean the bottom basket, will the gravel sink back down to the bottom on the next backwash when I put the mixed media back? I assume I should manually top it up it with water before putting the head back on and then do a normal backwash to re-stratify the media and gravel.

With the Clack valve what is the best way to remove all the water from the tank prior to removing the head? I thought of making an adapter to connect an air line to the inlet...

Not sure why I was over-complicating this. Added an airline fitting just before the bypass valve so I can turn off the valve on the HP tank outlet and introduce air into the line while in fast rinse sending the water to the drain. I would close the outlet bypass valve to keep the air from moving forward into the softener.

I could do the same to remove water from the softener (bypassing the iron filter first) should I need to disassemble and clean it. Meanwhile, I have a camera recording the pressure during pump cycles to monitor (and deduce flow) during backwash. Last backwash, the pressure dropped to 14 PSI.

 

[Reach4]

Recently I've had problems where the top basket is getting clogged, reducing the backwash flowrate. This could be observed by the sound and the pressure not dropping as low during backwash. I attribute the wife's heavy water use for irrigation during a recent drought to too much iron buildup between backwashing leading to failure to properly backwash.

Usually I would expect that you would not run irrigation water through any media.

I expect you were doing that to prevent surfaces from turning orange. Maybe have two irrigation spigots to choose from, depending where the water will be spraying.

 

[Bannerman]

An upper basket will not normally be utilized with iron removal media because of this very reason. Instead, an umbrella diffuser will deflect the incoming flow so the flow will be scattered instead of flowing as a solid stream and erroding the media below.

Using the appropriate DLFC flow rate, the media should not be lifted high enough to become discharged during backwashing.

Ditttohead shows an umbrella diffuser as item #27-105UMB on page 140 of his catalogue.

https://view.publitas.com/impact-water-products/2018-catalog-final/page/140

 

[LLigetfa]

Usually I would expect that you would not run irrigation water through any media.

As per your second sentence, it is to prevent iron staining of surfaces.

I expect you were doing that to prevent surfaces from turning orange. Maybe have two irrigation spigots to choose from, depending where the water will be spraying.

I have one special spigot plumbed before the iron filter but the wife never thinks to switch the hose to it. Just as well, as in the past she would forget to switch back to the filtered spigot and our white vinyl siding and our paper white birch trees got terribly stained.

What I need to do is train the wife to initiate a regen after a day of heavy watering. Keep in mind that this is not an in-ground sprinkler system but rather hand nozzles on garden hoses. I use the plural form as there are 3 spigots with 3 hoses, where only the one hose reel with the longest hose has the option to connect before the iron filter.

 

[LLigetfa]

An upper basket will not normally be utilized with iron removal media because of this very reason.

You may recall from previous discussions that my iron filter has less than the ideal freeboard since my water guy added 0.5 CF more FilterAG. I suspect that I have since lost some of the finer grained media through the top basket. I also suspect some of the finer grained media is contributing to clogging of the basket. I am still contemplating adding 0.5 CF of Katalox Light after I see how much freeboard I have left. I am hoping it performs better than FilterAG.

 

[Bannerman]

Eliminating fine/broken/lightweight media granules is part of the purpose for backwashing media. When media is too small, it can compact too tightly and reduce the flow rate through the media bed.

Ditttohead's catalogue on page 155, specifies the recommended backwash rate for Filter AG to be 8-10 GPM per ft2 to result in 20%-40% bed expansion with 60°F incoming water temperature. You can then determine the maximum permissible backwash rate for the available freeboard space in your tank before intact media will be backwashed to drain while not utilizing a top screen.
https://view.publitas.com/impact-water-products/2018-catalog-final/page/155