High Flow Softener?

[D C]

Shopping for a softener for my new house and am looking for recommendations
Grains per gallon: 20.5
Iron: 1 ppm

Well is a 1.5hp constant pressure Grundfos coming in on a 1.25" main
Main line through house is 1" PEX
Master bath has a party shower with 4 heads
Upstairs has 2 additional bathrooms (served by their own water heater)

Kids are aged 22&16, so water needs will be decreasing over the years as they (if they?) move out.

Been shopping online at the upflow (better efficiency = good, right? even though the up vs downflow thread suggests that might be minimal). Discount Water Softeners and Quality Water Treatment appear to have nearly identical systems with the same valve.

I've been looking in that 15-20 gpm range, which seems reasonable.

Suggestions on what to look for and/or what not to waste my time looking at & fretting over?

Thanks,
Dave

 

[ditttohead]

Downflow vs. upflow, old topic, way to much information to go through again but don't bother with upflow in most applications it is simply not worth the potential headaches. We do a lot of upflow systems but they are for highly specialized applications where it is important to the system design, or for marketing, or for ultra low salting system designs... this is already getting to long. I would avoid most of the online companies. I wont say who on the forum but many are simply guys sitting in their moms basement running a website with no actual knowledge or inventory. They do know how to cut and paste information from other peoples websites though.

Since you are on a well, this should be carefully considered. Do you have a complete water report? We would like to know about competing ions, pH, water temperature, and it would also help to know how your specific well system is designed. Do you have a standard submersible pump with a bladder tank, pressure switch or do you have an atmospheric tank with a repressurization pump?

For higher flow applications you will need a Clack 1.25" valve or one of the new larger Fleck valves. I am partial to the 5810 and 5812 valves. Please be aware that most inline companies do not understand flow rates based on the system size. They will simply put the valve spec down, not the actual system specification. Here is a page from our catalog, this should give you an idea of what the system can do in reality. https://view.publitas.com/impact-water-products/2018-catalog-final/page/44-45

 

[Sponsor]

 

[D C]

I have a standard drinking water report with the hardness and iron, and of course the verification of no icky-stuff to make the health department happy.

It's a 1.5hp submersible constant pressure pump (SQE, I believe) with just the ~1 gallon accumulator tank inside.

The Fleck 5810 certainly looks like it has a sufficient valve-only flow rate with over 30 gpm @ 15psi drop at 5- psi inlet. Seems like the 5812 would be overkill.

 

[Bannerman]

The Fleck 5810 certainly looks like it has a sufficient valve-only flow rate with over 30 gpm @ 15psi drop at 5- psi inlet.

That is as Ditttohead mentioned, the maximum (peak) flow rate the valve will support. What will need to be established is the softener size (quantity of resin) as that will determine the Service Flow Rate for the softener. While SFR may be exceeded on occasion, hardness leakage through the softener would then be expected.

If your water analysis only indicates hardness, iron and that there is no bacteria detected, that is not as comprehensive as Ditttohead requested . Suggest obtaining a comprehensive well test such as offered by National Labs or KAR Labs.
http://www.ntllabs.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=NTL&Category_Code=Homeowner

http://www.karlabs.com/

 

[D C]

Understood, regarding the valve flow rate. That tells me essentially that "the valve is not the bottleneck". The challenge (so far) seems to be finding relevant info on the rest of the system other than the valve. From the valve perspective, it seems like every softener is more or less the same with only a few companies to pick from. Pick a valve company, pick a resin tank, connect and you're done. Especially seems to be that way when shopping big-box stores. Every one of those things looks identical. "Whirlpool" softener? I doubt it. It looks the same as the GE unit, which looks the same as the Kenmore softener I had in my last house that was almost 20 years old.

Even the 5600 SXT valve looks like it would be suitable for flow rate. With 4 showerheads @ 2.5 gpm, and maybe one of the kids in the shower at the same time, and maybe something else going, 15 gpm would be a realistic high-side limit except in some exceptional situation. Even that may be optimistic, given the flow rate of the water heater with 3/4" inlet/outlet fittings.

So if a 15-30 gpm valve would do the job, I'm wondering where that comparable data is on the resin. No chlorine in well water (hopefully) so the cross-linking % doesn't seem critical. Fine mesh is supposedly better for iron, though there seems to be conflicting info on whether 1 ppm is merely moderate or world-ending-high.

Going to look into a more comprehensive water test. I literally told the local company that I need whatever the health department needs, and please do hardness and iron while you're at it. What are the key things I should be asking for? This is a place that's relatively local (who did the other tests) http://brightonanalytical.net/573/index.html

 

[ditttohead]

A full well test similar to the ones listed above by Bannerman. You are your own municipality so water testing is important. There are many components that go into a water quality improvement device with many ways to cheat the cost down. Internal riser, screens, medias, media fillers or substitutions, underbedding, valve manufacturer (original Fleck or nearly identical counterfeit valve) brine tank manufacturer, etc. We have seen a lot of counterfeiting lately and I suspect this trend to continue. RO systems are far worse since they are made with dozens of small pieces all of which can be made for pennies or dollars. When I travel to China I see filter housings that cost less than $1, this is truly scary as this few dollars of savings can cause tens of thousands in water damage. I have seen companies rinsing off carbon block extrusion systems with nasty, dirty, absolutely contaminated water, I have seen companies grinding production waste and giving it the company next door to use as filler in membrane housings... seriously scary stuff that would not fly in the US, Canada, Germany, Italy etc. I also see some very good manufacturing in China when the manufacturing facilities are monitored properly. And yes, US companies will buy and resell this junk claiming they didnt know... it is hard to claim that with a straight face if you have been in the industry for more than a decade. I have seen this for decades of travel with the water treatment and pharma industries. Even pharmaceutical manufacturing overseas has some major nightmare stories I could tell... but I wont.

I would avoid the 5600SXT for a larger application like yours, it would be the bottleneck. The numbers you see for peak flow rates dont tell the whole story. If it were my house... and my house has a mega shower... I would use the 5812 since it is a true full port 1.25" control valve. Using a slightly larger diameter tank will also negate the pressure loss considerably. Do not go with fine mesh resin, while I do sell a lot of it for iron, iron should be treated prior to the softener properly or regular chemical dosing should be done and intermittent chemical stripping of the resin and since the fine mesh resin causes potential flow loss... Higher salt dosing, lower efficiency should be expected if using a softener for iron reduction. It is also important to understand that lower pH and softener/iron reduction is good, high pH and softener iron reduction causes excessive fouling of the resin bed. Resin cleaner is cheap and a lot of our customers that use softening for iron reduction simply include a 5 gallon bucket resin cleaner so that it is easily added regularly without concern for cost.