Problems with Fleck 7000

[JonnieBlaze]

Hey everyone, I'm having some issues with a Fleck 7000 water softener I installed about 2 years ago. It has worked seemly fine since I bought it, but about 2 months ago starting having issues and I'm still trying to figure them out.

Water details:

Private well 300' deep.
9.8 gpm flow rate.
Lots of sediment, so I have a 100 micron sediment filter between the pressure tank and softenver.
Hardness: 10 gpg
Iron: 2.8 ppm
Manganese: .5 ppm
pH: 7.5
TDS: 200
Nitrates: 0
No Coliform or E-Coli
​

I purchased this unit:

Fleck 7000SXT 64,000 grain softener
12x48 resin tank
2cu ft sst-60 resin
gravel underbedding and standard distributor baskets (not a vortech or turbulator setup)
Fleck 7000SXT has .125 BLFC and 3.5 DLFC. Also has light purple/violet injector.​

Settings:

Backwash1 10 minutes
Brine Draw 60 minutes
Backwash2 5 minutes
Rapid Rinse 10 minutes
Brine Fill 48 minutes
Set to regen no longer than every 7 days.
​

Problems

1. My biggest problem was it stopped drawing brine. I've performed the steps below but it's still not drawing brine. It fills ok, but is very slow as noted below in my questions.
   1. Cleaned injector, injector screen, brine valve, BLFC, DLFC
   2. Replaced air check
   3. Checked all brine draw/fill line connectors/fittings

Questions

1. Is the .125 BLFC and violet injector compatible with a 12" tank? My research online shows I should have a red injector and a .25 BLFC.
2. I was getting air bubbles in my Brine Fill stage. I took the brine valve apart and found a smashed oring presumably from the factory. I changed the orings and I don't have air in the Brine Fill now.
3. Brine Fill is very slow...every after the above cleanings. I've even completely removed the BLFC for testing purposes, and during Brine Fill it takes 10 minutes to get a gallon of water. That would be the same as if I had a .1 BLFC installed, but for this test I had nothing installed. Should have been much faster, right?
4. My injector and screen were covered in red iron requiring cleaning. It's not slimy, kind of chalky if you let it dry. Problem is, I thought with the 7000, all the water going through the injector should be soft, so why is there this much iron build up here?

Any help or answers would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Reach4]

1. I think yes. Your blue #2 injector draws about 0.5 GPM. In 15 minutes, it could draw about 7.5 gallons of brine, which would leave 45 minutes for your slow rinse. You are drawing brine that was made from 6 gallons of water. I think that makes about 6.9 gallons of brine. So for your current BF number, your #2 Blue is good. If you used #1 injector, you would draw 5.25 gallons in 15 minutes, so you would need to increase your Bd time in that case (Bd should be at least 4x the time of the expected brine drawing).
If you decided to drop to 6 pounds of salt/cuft which gives C=40 and BF=32, you could save 33% on salt. In that case, a #1 red injector would be a little better but not necessary. I am not a pro, and my calculations could be off.

2. Good.

3. Wow. Something needs cleaning. I wonder if the Iron Out would help that.

4. I think you should change DO to 3 or 4 if you are not going to have an iron filter. I would use one of the salts that has an additive to help with removing iron. http://www.mortonsalt.com/home-product/morton-rust-remover-pellets/ http://www.diamondcrystalsalt.com/Water-Softening/Products/Red-Out-Pellets/Red-Out-Pellets.aspx Also, you need to also clean your system with Iron Out or a special chemical, such as Res Care, periodically -- maybe once per month. They sell a dispenser that adds Res Care to the brine tank so that it is automatically added for every regen.

https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?threads/garys-trick-and-how-effective-is-iron-out.47363/
https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?threads/how-to-give-softener-a-thorough-cleaning-for-iron-and-bacteria.31102/

You really should get a backwashing iron filter at the front end. That would let you go much longer between regens, and it would keep things a lot cleaner. And it would be less work.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[JonnieBlaze]

EDIT: My injector is violet, not light blue. I'll update my original post.

1.Your answer to this one might be different now that I've double checked the injector and found it is violet/light purple instead of blue. Could have swore it was blue, just cleaned it this morning.

3. So you agree I should be getting more than 1 gallon every 10 minutes in the brine fill with the BLFC removed for testing? That's the tough part right now, I can't find anything that needs cleaning at all. I don't have any external water leaks during brine fill. I don't have anything leaking out of the drain during the brine fill. Unless something is leaking into the resin tank.

4. Ok, I can decrease DO to 3 or 4. I do sprinkle some Iron Out in between each bag of salt as I put them in the salt tank. I also forgot to mention I have a rescare dispenser and keep it full.

Yeah I've really tossed the idea of an iron filter around. From all my reading it seems of softener, especially with SST-60 resin, should be able to handle my level of iron. But you're right, it would certainly help everything out if I got rid of the iron first.

 

[Reach4]

1.Your numbers assume that my BLFC matches the injector, right? If my injector is .5 gpm, but my BLFC is only .125 gpm, then it would take 48 minutes to draw the full 6 gallons of brine water, right?

No. Your BLFC puts water into the tank slower than the injector pulls it out. One way to look at it is if BLFC is 1/8 GPM, the injector that draws 1/2 GPM will draw 4 times as fast. The BLFC does not limit the brine flow coming in... it's magic, or the BLFC is not symmetrical, or the water takes a different path while sucking -- one of those. That does not take into account the small expansion that the brine has over the water that was used to make it (1.15x).

See http://www.superironout.com/water-uses.php. If you use the search above for Iron Out (Super Iron Out is the same) for posts by Gary Slusser, you will find descriptions of using Iron Out for dealing with softener iron.

OK on the Res Care. It smells better than Iron Out, but it costs a lot more for a given amount of iron removal I think. Is the dose settable?

 

[JonnieBlaze]

Understood on the BLFC now. It only limits the flow in one direction, the filling direction. For the brine draw, that flow is maintained by the injector only. So maybe my times are actually correct based on my note above that I actually have the violet injector, not the blue one. I can't find any numbers for the injectors, but I see the graphs in the service manual and looks like the violet draws at just under .2 gpm.

 

[Reach4]

Ahh. I see I confused violet with #2 blue!

I am going to call that #00 0.17 GPM from the graph unless I get a better number. In that case, with that #00 violet injector, I would increase Bd to 109 minutes or more... IF I used the 32 minute BF. And proportionally more if I stayed with the 48 minute BF. The symptom of being too short would be to have salt remaining in the water after a regen. The operational test is to taste the brine drain line near the end of that cycle.

So #00 violet is small enough that I would call that wrong, and feel that you should have gotten a white or blue or red to begin with. I would ask the seller to send you a #1 white or #2 blue, since #00 was wrong to begin with. With BF=32 and #0 red you need Bd= 74 minutes or more and with #1 white you need 53 or more.

 

[JonnieBlaze]

No worries, you didn't confuse it, I confused it by getting the color wrong in the first place.

Thanks for the help. I have the brine draw working again now, not sure why it didn't work after I cleaned everything, must have had a leak in the line somewhere even though I checked them all. Anyway, it's operational now, and I've updated the settings to your recommendations. I actually thought I was using 6 lbs of salt per cu ft already, but I see my calculations were wrong and I was using a little more. Brine draw of 108 and brine fill of 32 for a total of 12 lbs of salt is right where I wanted to be originally.

I think that answers everything for now. I'm still confused now the injector area gets iron buildup if its using softened water, but maybe since it has been acting up for 2 months it had enough time to accumulate.

I've read the recommendation of doing two back to back regens with full 15 lbs of salt per cu ft dosages. I'll be doing that tomorrow or monday to get the softener back on track.

 

[Bannerman]

I'm still confused now the injector area gets iron buildup if its using softened water.

The injector acts as a venturi as faster moving incoming (unsoftened) rinse water flows through one section, which creates suction on the brine port to draw brine from the brine tank. The injector flow charts usually show three lines, one showing the brine draw rate, a higher rate for rinse flow, and the third for the total rate for both combined.

As an 18 lb salt setting can regenerate all 32K capacity/cuft (max capacity of standard resin), a single 18 lb/cuft regeneration should be all that is required to restore all depleated resin capacity.