The Clack units are great but unfortunately a lot of companies are all about price. Fortunately a lot of dealers look for quality and are willing to pay slightly more for very high end equipment. Most of the smaller dealers who have left us for the "amazing low price" our competitors offer come back within a year due to a catastrophic failure of some type. I just helped a dealer with a leak that was going to cost them in excess of $100,000 due to a failed $12 Chinese knockoff part that cost $16 from Fleck. Not exactly the best investment...
A failed bottom screen is almost always a failure of the screen caused by them being 25 cents from China. They look just like the Fleck part, but the Fleck one cost $3. you can literally crush the Chinese knockoff in your hand with little effort. Maybe I will post a quick video in the near future of the cheap screen being smashed by my 11 year old daughter, and then the Fleck, Clack, or Philips Brothers screen being run over by our huge Shipping Truck and still looking ok
The screens fail simply due to their poor quality, bad design, and the fact that they are manufactured for the lowest cost. When the plastic molding company across the street makes one for 1 penny cheaper, all the junk companies immediately switch over to them.
Bad resin will put some extra stress on the screen, but a good screen should not fail. The homeowner should simply get low/no flow to the house as the low grade resin turns to much. I have seen some companies buy what we call "floor sweepings" resin. This is the stuff that did not pass any QC controls and should have simply been discarded... or they can sell it to some company that mass produces ultra low cost softeners for 1/3 the cost of good resin. It will typically last a year or two before it fails.
Gravel underbedding is very important for multitude of reasons. It adds a little cost and shipping weight but the benefits far outweigh the very slight cost savings, unless you are selling for such allow margin that $4 is gonna make or break you... sigh. This is most of the companies that sell online. They are all trying to be the lowest price, common sense tells you that the price is too good to be true, but people still buy from the lowest price companies knowing that there are likely a bunch of junk parts inside...
Last comment re: this fun topic. Many companies claim 8% but how can you verify it? We distribute container loads of resin to many companies. Many of these companies want the lowest price period. They dont care about quality, crosslinking etc. It is only a price game to them. We do not even allow anything less than 8% WQA certified resin to enter our facility. Anything less and it has to be direct shipped by the container. We would not want our customers to ever think we would use anything less.