Frugal-Mike
New Member
I have a Kinetico 60 water softener that was purchased by the previous home owner in September 1985. My home is on well water and I've owned the home since 1996. The system worked fairly well until the well pump impeller disintegrated in 2005 causing little plastic bits to show up occasionally in the Kinetico valve system. (There is no pre-filter) The initial symptom was the brine tank overflowing. Since then, we just occasionally get bad tasting water when the system regenerates. The local service folks fixed this the first two times. Since then, I've taken it apart a couple of times to clean it out myself.
Lately, it just seems that every time it regenerates the water tastes bad for a while and we get iron deposits on the fixtures.
So, this is a 25 year old system with almost all original parts and with the original resin. Also, the house is 5 bedrooms and 3 baths. The previous owner had two adults and three teenage children and the system was sized for his family. Now that my son is off at college, it's just the wife and me so the system is probably not set optimally.
I see three options:
Hardness: 76 ppm (4.44 gpg?)
Iron: 2.15 ppm
Manganese 0.41 ppm
According to Gary's web site, this gives a compensated hardness of: 4.44 + (2.15 * 4) + (0.41 * 2) = 13.86
The Kinetico currently has a #3 disk (old style orange type) which, according to this page, will regenerate every 1514 liters or 400 gallons. The brine drum adjuster tube is set to 'H' and the float cup height is "1". I believe these correspond to a salt load of 4 lbs per regen.
So, here are my questions:
Thanks in advance.
Mike
Lately, it just seems that every time it regenerates the water tastes bad for a while and we get iron deposits on the fixtures.
So, this is a 25 year old system with almost all original parts and with the original resin. Also, the house is 5 bedrooms and 3 baths. The previous owner had two adults and three teenage children and the system was sized for his family. Now that my son is off at college, it's just the wife and me so the system is probably not set optimally.
I see three options:
- Try Super Iron Out on regens for both tanks (this has not been done in at least the last 13 years), clean out the control valve, install a pre-filter, and empty out and flush the resin tanks to get any impeller pieces that might be in there. If the resin looks bad (pieces not round?), go to #2.
- Do the above and replace the resin in both tanks. According to specs, each tank holds 3/4 cu.ft.
- Buy a new water softener.
Hardness: 76 ppm (4.44 gpg?)
Iron: 2.15 ppm
Manganese 0.41 ppm
According to Gary's web site, this gives a compensated hardness of: 4.44 + (2.15 * 4) + (0.41 * 2) = 13.86
The Kinetico currently has a #3 disk (old style orange type) which, according to this page, will regenerate every 1514 liters or 400 gallons. The brine drum adjuster tube is set to 'H' and the float cup height is "1". I believe these correspond to a salt load of 4 lbs per regen.
So, here are my questions:
- Is there any reasonable chance the resin is still good after 25 years?
- Is it possible to buy 1 1/2 cu. ft. of resin rather than 2 cu. ft? This affects the cost of option #2.
- Is this system currently set up badly for 2 adults who are not wasteful with water?
- Do you consider this system worth rebuilding?
Thanks in advance.
Mike