Help Setting Up Fleck 5600 SXT 64k

[thevictors51]

Hi,

So I recently purchased and installed a water softener with the specs bekow

Fleck 5600 sxt
64k grains
SST-60 resin
Vortec Tank

Water information is as follows:

Compensated hardness (includes iron) : 22 grains

Water source: well.
People in house: 3 (2 adults one 2 year old)

I was wondering if anyone could help me out, I am trying to determine the best settings for salt efficiency.

Current settings are as follows

DF/GAL
VT. Df1b
Ct/fd
NT 1
C:64
H:22
Rs/rc: sf
SF 20%
Do 7
RT 2:00
BW:8
BD:50
RR:8
BF: 12
t0.7

From reading other posts I don't think these settings are the most optimal.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Reach4]

What is actual hardness, and how much iron?

System info (not programmed)
salt lb/cuft = 6.75 ; A choice ( efficiency vs capacity)
BLFC = 0.5 ; Brine Refill rate GPM
cubic ft resin = 2 ; ft3 resin = (nominal grains)/32,000
Raw hardness = 22 ; including any compensation
People = 3 ; gallons affects reserve calc
Estimated gal/day = 180 ; 60 gal per person typical calc
Estimated days/regen = 11.13 ; 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 = 43.1 ; capacity in 1000 grains
H = 22 ; Hardness-- compensate if needed
RS = rc ; rc says use gallons vs percent
RC = 180 ; Reserve capacity gallons
DO = ?? ; Day Override (28 if no iron) How much iron?
RT = 2:00 ; Regen time (default 2 AM)
BW = 5 ; Backwash (minutes)
Bd = 60 ; Brine draw minutes
RR = 5 ; Rapid Rinse minutes
BF = 9 ; Brine fill minutes
FM = usually t0.7 ; flow meter, make note of what is there

Alternative C and BF pairs:
lb/cuft ; C= ; BF=
5.250 ; 37.2 ; 7
6.000 ; 40.0 ; 8
6.750 ; 43.1 ; 9
7.500 ; 46.1 ; 10
8.250 ; 48.9 ; 11
9.000 ; 51.3 ; 12
9.750 ; 53.4 ; 13
The less salt per cubic ft, the more salt efficient, but more hardness breakthrough.
the sweet area is in bold.

 

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[thevictors51]

Reach4 thanks for the reply.

Actual Hardness is 7 grains per gallon
Iron: 3ppm

I calculated my compensated hardness by 7+(3*5) = 22 grains per gallon.

Since I have that Iron I figure a DO of 7 would be good. Thoughts?

 

[Reach4]

I think you are right. If you got a do-over, you would have gone with a 1.5 cuft softener.

You should add some citric acid to your salt. They sell special iron-handling salt that comes with the citric acid added.

You will want to clean the controller at some interval, and I don't know what that interval will need to be. Maybe use your Hach 5B on your softened water to see how the hardness is looking as regen time is coming. Iron Out is really good for removing iron from softener parts, and many add that to the brine tank instead of citric acid. Citric acid smells a lot better. Your local Menards will stock the big container 9.5 lb of Iron Out (AKA Super Iron Out) at a good price. https://www.menards.com/main/housew...163-c-7097.htm?tid=-134343550293442833&ipos=7 That gets rinsed out during regen, so it will not stink up your softened water.

If you got a backwashing iron filter to precede the softener, then you could go a lot longer between regenerations.

 

[thevictors51]

Reach4 thanks for the reply, I'll plan to add Iron out once in a while. Currently I am using Morton iron fighter salt (green bag).

One last question. On my initial settings, I am seeing water over my salt (I added 4 40# bags this weekend).

With the settings you provided will that fix the issue or is there something else going on here?

I have heard a bunch of different things when it comes to water in the brine tank. I heard with my softener setup I should only have about 12" of water in the tank after the re gen cycle. Thoughts?

Brine tank is 15" x 17" x 36".

 

[Reach4]

One last question. On my initial settings, I am seeing water over my salt (I added 4 40# bags this weekend).

You want to have some salt over your water surface to avoid stratification. If you wanted to keep an eye on things in the early days of the new softener, you could tilt the salt pour to do that while minimizing the salt fill. Having less salt lets you more easily tell if salt is being consumed, and is less to remove if you needed to empty the tank. However, having a brine well, you are unlikely to have an event that would cause you to want to empty the tank. You could do that before a brine tank cleanout.

Edit: with dimensions 15 x 17 of your brine tank, I estimate after filling the brine tank with 4.5 gallons (filling 9 minutes at 0.5 gpm) the brine water would rise about 4.5 inches if there were no salt, and 10.8 inches if full of salt. That gets added to the amount that was left when the brine was drawn out. This drawing illustrates what height that would be:

Note these are rough (ballpark, sanity check) estimates with some guess as to the effect of the rounded corners and the space occupied by the brine well.

 

[thevictors51]

Thank you so much that helped a lot.

One last thing. During the brine draw stage should the valve be drawing brine the whole time?

It got to about 20 mins left and there was little water in the brine tank and I could see small air bubbles going to the valve, so it was still drawing but not as fast

Does that mean I need to add more water to the brine tank?

 

[Reach4]

One last thing. During the brine draw stage should the valve be drawing brine the whole time?

No. Brine draw cycle is typically an hour. After about 15 minutes give or take, the brine is sucked out, and the rest of the time is "slow rinse". The only difference is that the brine is gone, and the check valve has shut to prevent sucking air.

Your check valve appears to have a little air leak, or something in the brine line from the check valve has a little leak. There is a vacuum in the brine line during slow rinse.

It is during slow rinse that the salt gets rinsed out of the resin tank.

The brine fill cycle should add the right amount of water for the next regen.

 

[ditttohead]

Post a picture of the inside of your brine well. There are a few different manufacturers of float assemblies.