Installation questions for Fleck 7000sxt

[Stephen Hall]

Greetings,

I just purchased a Fleck 7000sxt 48k softener from an online retailer and have had some problems with it that I think are the retailers fault (mostly) and need a bit of help. The first problem was that I ordered the thing setup for 3/4" plumbing and it showed up with 1" tails. This should have been my first hint that things were just not right but I did not know any better at the time. Anyway I finally got them to send me the correct tails and installed the thing. That went fairly smoothly except that when all was said and done There was constant flow through the drain line. After reading another thread on this forum I figured out to set the valve type to Fltr and let it sync and then set it back to dF2b and let it sync again. That took care of the drain line flow. The next problem was that I was not getting soft water. Checked the bypass, nope. Plus it was showing water flow on the display. I called the seller and they had me check the programming parameters and regenerate the thing (even though the resin bed was brand new and should be charged to begin with). The only settings we changed were for the BD (was 30 set to 60) and the B2 (was 0 set to 5). Anyway after a couple of regenerations I was still not getting soft water and the weekend was here so the seller was closed.

Further reading on this forum revealed a thread that referenced the riser tube coming in two sizes. I noticed that my parts came with what turned out to be the 32mm x 1.05" adapter. I already knew that I had the 1.05" riser tube because I also had to buy a PVC cap to cover the tube while putting in the resin so I assumed that I had a valve that was set up for the 32mm tube. I believe that this is why I was sent the 1" tails to start with. It is my theory that somebody did not do their job properly and sent me the right tank and the wrong valve. I took the head off of the tank and sure enough it needed to have the adapter put in so I took out the 32mm o-ring and retainer and put in the adapter. Once I put the thing back together I was getting soft water as I expected.

So my questions are these: I noticed early on that there was a small amount of the resin beads in my shower head (not much) and, I think, in the toilet valve that now makes a lot of noise. I have not investigated the toilet valve yet so I am assuming that the noise is caused by resin beads inside it somewhere. I have checked several times to be sure and I have the input and output correct. As you look over the top of the display toward the bypass valve the input is on the right and the output is on the left. I am wondering if the resin beads could have entered the plumbing due to the free flow of water between the two sides of the system while the riser tube did not match up?

The next question is that if I was sent a valve body set up for 1" plumbing are my DLFC and BLFC buttons likely to need replacing to match the characteristics of the now adapted head unit? If so, which ones do I need and how can I recognize which ones that I already have?

Finally, The softener sits in a raised closet off of my garage along with my water heater. I would like to move the brine tank outside of the closet to the floor of the garage. This would place it 2 feet below the softener. It would also give me much easier access to the ball valve that will shut off flow to the entire house in an emergency if I need it and easier access to the carbon filter that lives upstream of the softener. Finally it would make putting salt in easier. The question is, is the softener going to be able to lift the brine that much farther?

By the way, settings are: DF: Gal, VT: dF2b, CT: Fd, C: 48, H:20, RS:SF, SF:15, DO:14, RT:2:00,B1:10,BD:60, B2:5, RR:10, BF:30, FM:t1.2

Thanks!

--Stephen Hall

 

[Reach4]

The next question is that if I was sent a valve body set up for 1" plumbing are my DLFC and BLFC buttons likely to need replacing to match the characteristics of the now adapted head unit? If so, which ones do I need and how can I recognize which ones that I already have?

See if there are labels to that effect on the softener. You can measure the drain flow by flowing into a bucket of known volume. You could detach the line to the brine tank and measure that volume. If you use a 5 gallon bucket, you could weigh before and after to compute the volume.

Another variable is the injector. You might want to check the color on that.

City water?

Here is what I get for city water, 20 hardness if 6 pounds of salt per cuft. 4 people (number of people does not affect programming with the auto reserve )
CORRECTED.... you have 1.5 cubic ft, and I had put 2.0. Went to 8 pounds/sqft.

Note change in C!

System info (not programmed)

salt lb/cuft : 8
BLFC : 0.125
cubic ft resin : 1.5
Raw hardness : 20.0
Estimated gal/day : 180.0
Estimated days each regen : 9.1



Fleck 7000SXT Settings:

DF = Gal
VT = dF2b
CT = Fd
C = 36.0
H = 20.0
RS = cr
CR = 0.0
DO = 28
RT = 2:00
B1 = 8.0
Bd = 60.0
B2 = 5.0
RR = 10.0
BF = 32.0
FM = t1.2 (usual)
Brine tank 2 ft lower no problem.

I don't know if the missing adapter would be expected to let resin loose, but you saw loose resin. So seems probable to me that the missing adapter did that.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Bannerman]

The service flow path through the softener is for water to enter the tank above the resin, flow down through the resin and then exit up the central riser and out to the fixtures. The missing riser adaptor would allow the incoming hard water to 'leak' to the riser connection so the water would not flow through the resin and would not be softened as you had experienced. As the 'leakage' would occur directly below the control valve which is well above the resin, no resin leakage should have then occurred. Resin found within the plumbing fixtures is most often a result of a damaged riser tube below the resin surface or a broken bottom screen.

 

[Stephen Hall]

Thanks for the programming info Reach4. Yes, I am on city water and there are 4 of us (although my daughter can use a lot of water ). I will test the flow through both the Drain and Brine lines by measuring it for a defined period but what should they be? If I don't know what the flow rates should be then I will not know if I need restrictors. I am a little disappointed that on a 48K grain system I immediately lose a fourth of the listed capacity and only get to use 36K. I tried to use the sizing calculators and such but now that I understand a little more about these things I am sort of wishing that I had sprung for a slightly larger system. I have considered purchasing a larger capacity resin tank and using some of the almost brand new resin from my last system to supplement what I have. I had just replaced the resin bed in my 20 year old culligan Mark 89 when it died a horrible death. I guess I will run with this system for a while and decide whether to "upgrade" later.

I have not checked the injector yet but which one (color?) should I have?

Bannerman, I don't think that I am getting resin in the house after I placed the adapter in the head unit. I do not think my riser tube or bottom screen is broken but with this thing all bets are off. I did not know how much turbulence there would be in the tank during things like regen and normal flow to be able to loft a small amount of resin up to the top of the tank. I realize that it is a fair amount of lift that would be needed but am looking for an explanation. If I notice any more resin in the in house plumbing then I will definitely check on the riser tube and screen. Thanks for the pointer to check them.

Edited to add the question about the injector.

 

[Bannerman]

A 1.5 cuft system will usually utilize a 10" X 54" tank. A softener with a 10" diameter tank will typically utilize 2.4 gpm backwash/rapid rinse rate which is controlled by the DLFC button.

The BLFC rate is not as critical as a low BLFC flow rate can be compensated by simply programming longer refill time. As the programmed BF time is in full 1 minute increments, a low BLFC rate will provide finer control over the amount of salt to be utilized compared to higher flow BLFC button.

The amount of capacity to be restored is directly related to the salt setting chosen. Salt efficiency is increased when less capacity is restored so softener sizing should be based on your requirements while using an efficient salt setting.
For instance:
9 pounds salt (6 lbs/ cuft) will restore 30,000 grains capacity = 3,333 grains per pound salt efficiency
12 lbs salt (8 lbs/ cuft) will restore 36,000 grains = 3,000 grains/lb efficiency
15 lbs (10 lbs/cuft) will restore 40,500 grains = 2,7000 grains/lb efficiency
22.5 lbs (15 lbs/cuft) will restore 45,000 grains = 2,000 grains/lb efficiency

While 1.5 cuft of resin will have a total capacity of 48,000 grains when manufactured, some resin beads will typically become fractured in packaging, shipping and installation and over time in the regeneration process. Fractured beads will typically be flushed to drain so some capacity will be lost. Due to such, a 1.5 cuft unit will often be considered to have 45,000 grains total capacity as a safety margin.

If you actually require 48,000 usable grains between regeneration cycles, then a 2.5 cuft unit would be needed to provide 50,000 grains at a most efficient 6 lb/cuft salt setting. Alternatively, 2 cuft using an efficient 8 lb/cuft salt setting will provide 48K.

 

[Reach4]

I am a little disappointed that on a 48K grain system I immediately lose a fourth of the listed capacity and only get to use 36K.

It's a convention. Pretty much everybody does it.

On the plus side you are using 53% as much salt per regen at 8 pounds. I would not change the tank at this point.

I have not checked the injector yet but which one (color?) should I have?

White or Red. If you have red, you will increase BD.
If Blue, I think that would be worth changing.

Injector: _____ __min BD_, __ GPM draw
#00 Injector - Violet 108.7, 0.17
#0 Injector - Red 73.9, 0.25
#1 Injector - White 52.8, 0.35
#2 Injector - Blue 37.0, 0.5

"min BD" heading stands for calculated minimum BD. The GPM draw is the rate that brine is drawn from the brine tank until the air check valve in the brine tank closes because the brine has been drawn. My spreadsheet carried out the calculation to more than the data warrant, but round up. Typically with white you would use BD=60 and with red BD=90. About the first 1/4 of the BD time should draw all of the brine, and the last 3/4 is slow rinse to wash the salt out. If your brine still tastes of salt at the end of the slow rinse, you know that BD should be longer. If no brine taste 75% of the time through the cycle, you could back off BD. Usually you don't do that. If you were trying extra hard to minimize that last gallon of water use, or you wanted to get out of bypass as soon as possible, you could tune BD. Slower injector is a little more efficient, but takes more time.

Regarding resin in pipes, watch that your metering works. One person reported resin in the turbine blades, from an incident like yours, made it not work.

 

[Stephen Hall]

It's a convention. Pretty much everybody does it..

And that is probably for the best. It was simply that I did not understand exactly what I was getting into when I started. Probably still do not but at least I am a little better educated now.

Regarding resin in pipes, watch that your metering works. One person reported resin in the turbine blades, from an incident like yours, made it not work.

I already had to pull the turbine out and clean it up as I noticed that the unit was not registering water flow. There were a few beads in there and once it was cleaned up with some running water the system registers flow as it should. I will be watching it for a while though in case I have a deeper problem and it gets jammed again.

I will try to take the time tonight to pull the injector and see what color it is and to run a flow test on the drain and brine lines so that I know what the rates on them are. Thanks for all of the good information that all of you have provided.

 

[Stephen Hall]

White or Red. If you have red, you will increase BD.
If Blue, I think that would be worth changing.

Injector: _____ __min BD_, __ GPM draw
#00 Injector - Violet 108.7, 0.17
#0 Injector - Red 73.9, 0.25
#1 Injector - White 52.8, 0.35
#2 Injector - Blue 37.0, 0.5

OK, my injector is the Violet one. I presume that I should contact the seller and ask for the proper one. Given the choice should I request a red or white one? From your comments above, I am guessing the white one. While I am at it I will probably request a correct DLFC and BLFC. Which ones should I ask for? I have not had time to test the flows on these but am just assuming that they are wrong since everything else about this thing was. Thanks for the help!

 

[Reach4]

OK, my injector is the Violet one. I presume that I should contact the seller and ask for the proper one. Given the choice should I request a red or white one? From your comments above, I am guessing the white one. While I am at it I will probably request a correct DLFC and BLFC. Which ones should I ask for? I have not had time to test the flows on these but am just assuming that they are wrong since everything else about this thing was. Thanks for the help!

By my calculations, your alternative would be to increase the BD to 110. This would take your regen time to over two hours, but other than that that is fine. It is still a pretty odd choice for a build.

I don't know if you should ask for the red or white. I am thinking white, but maybe somebody with experience would have a suggestion.

I have not seen these injector colors. I wonder if the violet could be confused with blue.

 

[Stephen Hall]

I just heard from the vendor that I purchased the unit from and they put me in touch with a man named Norm from Nelson Corporation. I assume that Nelson is a parent company or a subsidiary of Fleck or Pentair. Anyway he assured me that for my size tank the violet injector was the correct one. Also, he tells me that I need to 2.4 gpm restrictor on the Drain and the 0.125 restrictor on the Brine line. He also told me how to recognize them visually. The numbers are stamped on the rubber button. Finally, he told me that I needed to have the Brine Draw set for 60 minutes and the Brine Fill set for 60 minutes as well.

He said that for 1.5 Cu. ft. of resin I would need 22.5 pounds of salt (at 15 lbs per Cu. ft.) and would thus need 7.5 gallons of brine. With a flow restrictor of 0.125 gpm on the brine line that would take 60 minutes to draw and 60 to replenish. Does that sound correct? It is different from the information that Reach4 gave me above. He indicated that I would need only 12 pounds of salt total (and thus 4 gallons of brine). At 22 pounds per regen I am going to be blasting through the salt. I assume that the difference is that I will not be regenerating the entire 48k grains of capacity but even those numbers do not seem to match up.

 

[Reach4]

Finally, he told me that I needed to have the Brine Draw set for 60 minutes and the Brine Fill set for 60 minutes as well.

He said that for 1.5 Cu. ft. of resin I would need 22.5 pounds of salt (at 15 lbs per Cu. ft.) and would thus need 7.5 gallons of brine. With a flow restrictor of 0.125 gpm on the brine line that would take 60 minutes to draw and 60 to replenish. Does that sound correct? It is different from the information that Reach4 gave me above. He indicated that I would need only 12 pounds of salt total (and thus 4 gallons of brine). At 22 pounds per regen I am going to be blasting through the salt. I assume that the difference is that I will not be regenerating the entire 48k grains of capacity but even those numbers do not seem to match up.

Not in tune with Norm.

Take a look at the manual for the brine draw rate of a violet injector. That 108 minutes I calculated was for the brine generated by 4 gallons of water, but 4 gallons of water produces more than 4 gallons of brine. The factor is about 1.155. Then after the brine has been sucked out, you need to rinse the salt off of the resin before putting it back in service. Rule of thumb is 3 times as long as it took to draw the brine. Is that rule of thumb overly cautious? I don't know. Try the taste test at 60 minutes into the cycle. Instead of tasting, you could use a TDS meter. Softening does not reduce TDS, but brining water does increase TDS.

Now suppose you generated your brine from 7.5 gallons of water? It would take even longer still to do the brine cycle with that violet. Bet that taste test would be salty after 60 minutes for that one.

The 0.125 BLFC is for filling the brine tank. It does not limit the draw to 0.125.
Check my numbers, at least for sanity. Maybe I made a mistake.

Bannerman in reply #5 laid out the case why using less salt gives more softening per pound of salt.

 

[Stephen Hall]

Reach4, I want to be clear that I am not questioning your knowledge and judgement in any way. I am trying rather to learn. Your knowledge and experience is exactly why I am here!

It sounds like what I am getting from Norm is pure theory and what I am getting from you is field experience. In a battle between theory and experiment I almost always go with experiment. So you win! It seems to me that tonight I really need to perform a rate test on the brine line! I suppose that if I am getting the recommended 0.125 gpm on the brine line then I can leave the injector alone even if it is not really the right one.
By the way, my manual does not say anything about the draw rates for the injectors so I will have to rely on your knowledge there. If I am not getting the required flow and the restrictor is the correct one then I suppose that I will simply order a white injector from somewhere and see where that takes me. Any idea what those things typically cost?

So, as per bannermans reply above, if I use 9 pounds of salt to restore 30k grains then that would only be 3 gallons of brine (at 3 lbs/gal). at 0.125 gallons per minute then I would need a brine draw of 24 minutes (make it 30). However, I think I read above that the longer brine draw is to let the brine sit in the resin bed for a bit to do its thing. So if I set the Brine Draw to 60 minutes and the brine fill to 30 minutes then that will leave 3 and 3/4 gallons of brine in the tank for the next regen and the next regen will only draw 3.75 gallons because the shutoff in the tank will stop the flow when the level reaches the required minimum. This all assumes that I am getting the required flow from the brine line. Then I need to set my reserve and such so that I be sure the thing regenerates at or before 30k grains. Does that sound right? Thank for your patience as I try to figure out what I am doing here!

 

[Reach4]

t sounds like what I am getting from Norm is pure theory and what I am getting from you is field experience .

Nope. Mine is theory from people with field experience and reading the lit. I have no relevant experience.

See the next to last page of rev F of the service manual. See the graphs? Three lines. During brine draw, there is some water flow, that develops the vacuum with a venturi, called "rinse". The draw is the brine being sucked up. Total is the sum. After the brine is gone, you are just left with rinse.

Brine fill and brine draw are independent. If you put in a 0.5 GPM BLFC you would use 1/4 as much BF (If you use BF=32 for 0.125 BLFC, BF would go from 32 to 8 minutes if you had a 0.5 BLFC), but nothing else would change. During BF, the softener is softening; it is not in bypass. The advantage of the slower BLFC is more resolution.

Your last paragraph is not close. Reread my second paragraph in reply #11 and let me know which parts do not make sense there. The amount of time the brine is there is determined by the injector, and your purple injector is better than red or white from that point of view. But that slower brine draw has limited advantage that would be traded off with the amount of time in bypass.

In 60 minutes your purple injector draws the brine, but it does not leave the recommend time for slow rinse. The BD cycle is combined brine draw and slow rinse. The softener does nothing different during that BD cycle. The switch from drawing brine to slow rinse only occurs because the brine has already been drawn.

 

[Bannerman]

Although this Fleck manual pertains to the 5600 Econominder, I believe the injectors are also common to the 7000 valve. http://www.ilovemywater.com/uploads/manuals/manual128.pdf

The chart on page 2 specifies a #1 White injector is appropriate for a 10" diameter softener. Although a 0.5 gpm BLFC button is also specified, I would suggest 0.25 gpm as each 1 minute fill time will affect a 3/4 pound salt increment instead of 1.5 pounds with the 0.5 button.

It is apparent from Norm's suggested salt setting, he is not knowledgeable regarding programing for salt efficiency. He simply specified 22.5 lbs as that is the requirement when regenerating all 45,000 grains as previously specified in post #5.

60 minutes is the usual BD cycle length. During that 60 minute cycle, the brine should be drawn from the brine tank within 15 minutes so during the remaining 45 minutes, slow rinse flow will push the brine through the resin bed and out to the drain so that no salty residue will remain. As the ratio of slow rinse flow rate and brine draw flow rate are calibrated to each other, the total BD cycle time should be 4X the time needed to draw brine to cause the brine tank air check valve to close.

 

[Stephen Hall]

Thanks for the link Bannerman.

OK, I finally got a chance to perform the flow tests on the brine. I sent the thing into regen and floated the small white cap from inside the brine tank on the water. There was too much water in my brine tank to start with and I do not yet have much salt in there so I was able to float it fine. I used a board across the top of the tank and a laser distance meter to measure the distance from the top of the tank to the "boat" floating on top of the water. During the brine draw I was able to measure the change in water level over time and calculate the number of cubic inches of brine leaving the tank per minute. For the first 23 minutes of the BD the boat was floating and I could reliably measure the change in water height. During that time the water level dropped 3.44". I also measured the internal diameter of the tank to to 18.53". This gives me about 928 cubic inches of water removed from the tank (or 4 gallons at 231 cu. in. per gallon). With that I measured a flow rate of 0.174 gpm of brine draw. How much rinse water was added to this by the injector I do not know. Because, from previous experimenting, I had too much water in the tank the brine continued to be drawn from the tank for 45 minutes. At that time the water level was about 2.5" still in the tank and it appears the the check valve shut off the flow of brine so I only got about 15 minutes of slow rinse this time. By the way, for 45 minutes at 0.174 gpm that is 7.8 gal or 23.5 lbs of salt. Wow!

During the Brine fill time I removed the tube and allowed the water to flow into a one gallon jug. I got just over three gallons of water returned to the tank during the Brine Fill phase and each gallon took just about 9 minutes and 20 seconds.

It appears that if I leave things as they are then on the next regeneration I will draw about 3 gallons of brine (9 lbs of salt) in about 17 minutes and be left with a 43 minute slow rinse. That is using a brine draw rate of 0.174 gpm and a fill rate of 0.107 gpm and BD:60 with BF:30.

Is there any value in ordering a white injector and a 0.25 fpm BLFC button? I currently have the 0.125 button. I suppose that with those parts I could shorten my regen time and save some water. I just looked back at the numbers that Reach4 gave several posts ago and for the violet injector he showed a BD rate of 0.17 gpm which is almost exactly what I measured. So for a white Injector, my brine draw time could go from 60 minutes to about 36 minutes and still have a slow rinse that is three times longer that the actual brine draw time. Is that reasonable? Thanks!

 

[Bannerman]

The slow rinse water is not added to the brine tank but is water flow only through the injector and resin tank. The rinse water flowing through the injector causes a vacuum to be created (venturi effect) which causes the brine to be drawn from the brine tank.

The time required to draw the brine to the closure of the air check valve, should be 1/4 of the total brine draw cycle. If the brine tank requires 30 minutes to empty, then the BD portion of the regen cycle should be 2 hours in length.

 

[Stephen Hall]

That is the way that I understood the thing to work. As it stands right now, if I change nothing the next regen will actually draw brine from the brine tank for about 16-17 minutes of the 60 minute Brine Draw. My question though is, is there any advantage to getting the correct injector and BLFC button that would allow for faster brine draws and fills? That would allow me to shorten the regen time and still use 9 lbs of salt and have a slow rinse that is 3x my brine draw. With the different injector and button I am thinking the BD would be something on the order of 36 minutes of which brine would be drawn for about 9 minutes and leaving 27 minutes for slow rinse. The BF time would be shortened as well but I have no idea how much. Is it better to have a 45 minute slow rinse as opposed to a 27 minute slow rinse. I do not really get what the slow rinse gets me that the rapid rinse later on will not. It seems like once the salt is in the resin tank the ion exchange probably happens pretty rapidly so leaving the salt to sort of sit seems like a bit of a waste in time and water. I suppose that I simply do not understand the theory of operation of these things.

 

[Reach4]

With that I measured a flow rate of 0.174 gpm of brine draw.

Incredibly close!

During the Brine fill time I removed the tube and allowed the water to flow into a one gallon jug. I got just over three gallons of water returned to the tank during the Brine Fill phase and each gallon took just about 9 minutes and 20 seconds.

8 minutes would be the nominal value, so you could compensate in your BF number to give you the 4 gallons you want if you want ot go with 8 pounds/cuft.

By the way, for 45 minutes at 0.174 gpm that is 7.8 gal or 23.5 lbs of salt. Wow!

But that was a one-off thing due to your previous experimenting...

Is there any value in ordering a white injector and a 0.25 fpm BLFC button?

Since the softener is in service during BF, the 0.25 BLFC is not going to help anything.
Injector-wise, it is a mixed picture. You know the issues. I might opt for white.

That is the way that I understood the thing to work. As it stands right now, if I change nothing the next regen will actually draw brine from the brine tank for about 16-17 minutes of the 60 minute Brine Draw.

Re-check that calculation.

 

[Stephen Hall]

Since the softener is in service during BF, the 0.25 BLFC is not going to help anything.
Injector-wise, it is a mixed picture. You know the issues. I might opt for white.


Re-check that calculation.

I guess I will order the white injector. Thanks for all your help!

As far as the calculation goes... I only have three gallons of brine available in the brine tank before the check valve shuts the flow off. (3 gallons / 0.174 gpm) = 17.2 minutes. Since BD is set to 60 that would leave about 43 minutes for the slow rinse. What am I missing?

 

[Reach4]

As far as the calculation goes... I only have three gallons of brine available in the brine tank before the check valve shuts the flow off. (3 gallons / 0.174 gpm) = 17.2 minutes. Since BD is set to 60 that would leave about 43 minutes for the slow rinse. What am I missing?

I was presuming 8 pounds per cubic ft.

If you are going for 8 pounds/cuft of salt, you should have 4* 1.155 gallons of brine in the brine tank. You get that by filling 4 gallons of water. The rest of the volume is due to the salt. If your BLFC is known to deliver a known rate less than 0.125 gallons per minute, you should compensate by increasing BF accordingly.

If you are going to use 3 gallons of water to give 6 lb/cuft, then you will change C to 30.0

Multiplying my 108.7 by 3/4 gives 81.5 minutes. So at least one of us missed something, and its more than the 1.155 factor.

The reason I was thinking 8 would be better than 6 is that you put a pretty good load on your softener. That might give an extra day between regenerations.