Is a float and stop valve required in brine tank?

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Mastiff

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The various valves and floats and such in the brine tank have been a source of unreliability for me, and I was told that all that stuff is really optional, only there as a backup. The controller itself has a check ball to prevent sucking air, so the only other thing is preventing overfill of the brine tank itself. I am currently just using a straight tube in the brine tank, and it works, but I'm suspicious that the system is now putting too much water in there and using up salt too quickly. Should the controller be metering the water precisely, or does it rely on the float/stop in the brine tank to keep too much water from going in?

I have an Autotrol 255/760 controller.
 

LLigetfa

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The role of the float in the brine tank is solely to stop air from getting sucked up. It does not control how much water gets added. If your brine tank has too much water, then it is one of two things, 1. the brine fill is too long, or 2. The brine draw is too weak to suck all of the brine out.
 

Mastiff

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The thing I have is a contraption and it both stops the system from sucking air and also has a float that shuts a valve when the water gets too high. The main controlled has a check ball in it anyway, so I'm not concerned about sucking air.

Should there be a setting for the duration of brine fill? I have the manual for my controller and I don't see anything that does that.
 

LLigetfa

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The overfill protection is not to control how much brine is produced. It is to keep the brine tank from overflowing should the brine draw fail. The amount of salt used per regen is the function of programming in the head.
 

Mastiff

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Thanks. I see where I can change that. It's more likely related to not drawing it all out though. All my problems seem to stem from small air leaks causing the brine draw to stop early.
 

Reach4

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My very old Autotrol had just a tube. No brine well. Just a tube thru the salt to the bottom. It worked fine, and that was not the cause of the change-out. The gears were. However it was a timed unit, so it used more salt than a demand unit.
 

LLigetfa

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I serviced an Autotrol that was not drawing the brine and so overflowed the brine tank. The venturi needed to be cleaned. After I emptied the water from the brine tank, I added the proper amount of water for the first cycle and then added just enough salt to cover the water so I could see if it worked. To my disappointment, it didn't draw any brine and the brine fill stage added more water. The mistake I made was to assume I had to add water for the first cycle but the ball float chamber had only air in it so refused to draw brine. It was only after the brine fill stage that the air got pushed out allowing the ball to float allowing the brine draw on the next cycle.
 

Mastiff

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Indeed, I learned the same lesson. I'm not sure how they intend people to do it, but I manually step through the cycles to the fill stage once to get it primed. In my experience, it's a slightly flawed design due to how unforgiving that check ball is. It can't self prime, and even the most microscopic air leak will build up over time and that ball will slowly drop, sometimes before all the brine has been drawn in.

I was told that if there is a safety check in the brine tank pickup, you should leave the ball out. I think I'll try that next, because it won't go to "hard stop" until the tank is actually empty. On the other hand, if the tube fails badly for some reason, the system will suck air.
 

ditttohead

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The flapper valve tends to wear and drip to the brine over time. Remove the brine line and see if it drips.

Be sure to only use Fleck or Clack safety float kits. There is a plethora of cheap float kits out there that should be avoided.
 
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