Quality vs Value - Fleck vs Morton

Which one should I get?


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RV1458

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I am currently debating between two softeners the Morton MC30 and the Fleck 5600 SXT 32k. Either one meets our needs in terms of capacity etc. I know that the Fleck 5600 SXT is a better quality system, but it is $510. The Morton MC30 is only $329 at Costco ($352 w/tax). Is the Fleck actually worth an extra $160?

Even if the MC30 only lasts ten years, the Fleck would have to last about 16 years for the cost per year to be equivalent, but it would probably need a resin change in that period, which I think would cost about $200 so now the Fleck has to last about 20 years with no issues other than a resin change vs the MC30 that can be trashed and completely replaced in 10 years, at which point every valve, gasket, hose, electronics, etc. would be brand new.

I like buying quality products, but I also like value and a good deal. Based on my analysis above, I'm tempted to take my chances on the MC30. Is there anything I'm not considering?
 

Mikey

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You can't beat the Costco warranty, at least for the first year. The MC30 limited warranty is a little too limited, imho, but the first year is the hardest for most electronic/mechanical gadgets. The DIY install kit looks very complete, and it's a neat, compact installation. OTOH, as you point out, Fleck is kind of Cadillac-y in the controller business. I'd gamble the $352 for a year, and if it fails, take it back, pony up another $200, and see if your luck with Fleck is any better. Someone n this forum can probably tell you who makes the MC30 components, which may affect the decision, or not. I just bought a generator from Costco, was disappointed to find it was made in you-know-where, but the fit, finish, documentation, and overall (perceived) quality were superb.
 

Reach4

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Either one meets our needs in terms of capacity etc.
Tell us about your water. City water with 7 grains of hardness? 2 people?

Chlorine levels are a big factor in resin life. If you have chlorinated water, you want to get 10% crosslinked resin. It will last longer than standard resin in the presence of chlorine.

I expect resin to last longer than you do, unless you have higher chlorine levels. 1 cubic ft of resin is going to cost a lot less than $200, but you may be figuring in a labor amount.

Try this search on CL: softener -washer including the minus sign as shown. I am not proposing that you buy a used softener. You probably won't find many with Fleck 5600SXT controllers come up in the search. Nobody is dumping them, it seems to me. See what softeners that are not really old come up. Yes, it is very unscientific.

Neither is a bad choice if they meet your softening needs. There is something to be said for cabinet softener as a replaceable unit. Cabinet units take a little less space too. But I would tend toward the conventional unit.

Note that the nominal capacity numbers in grains are not what you should expect to get. It is possible that you could get those numbers, but using less salt, while reducing capacity some, will reduce salt use even more. So using half as much salt as you would need to get those nominal numbers will give you more softening per pound of salt. Instead divide that nominal number by 32000 to get the number of cubic ft of resin. The Morton M30 has 0.82 cubic ft of resin.
 
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RV1458

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Tell us about your water. City water with 7 grains of hardness? 2 people?

Chlorine levels are a big factor in resin life. If you have chlorinated water, you want to get 10% crosslinked resin. It will last longer than standard resin in the presence of chlorine.

I expect resin to last longer than you do, unless you have higher chlorine levels. 1 cubic ft of resin is going to cost a lot less than $200, but you may be figuring in a labor amount.

City water, 10-20 grains of hardness (varies throughout the year). Use 5-6,000 gallons of water per month. Chlorine avg of 1ppm. water pressure avg of 60psi.

I got a quote for $200 for 8% resin. How much do you think that should be?
 

Reach4

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With that much use and hardness, I would go for a softener with 1.5 cubic ft of resin. Unfortunately 1.5 cubic ft of resin for replacement usually costs more than 1.5 times as much as 1 cubic ft. Click Inbox above. I suspect that when people quote a number for expected life they are naming a number where maybe 85% (guess on my part) of the people would hit that number. If your city water report says 1 ppm of chlorine, expect the level to be reduced by the time it hits houses.

1 cubic ft is not much, if any, undersizing. If we presume 16 grains of hardness, it is about right. This is because you are usually getting 20000 to 24000 grains of softening out of a cubic ft of resin when you set up for salt efficiency.

Note that you will not want to run the water you water the lawn through the softener. If that 5000...6000 gallons includes watering, then there will be less than that through the softener.
 
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Bannerman

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Big Box store softeners are typically advised against on this site. While some (few) posters appear to be lucky, I recall prior posters frequently needing to replace their big box units after only 3 or 4 years. You are counting on a 10 year lifespan. I recall one poster, was not able to get 2 units to operate right out of the box. While these may not have been the same brand that you're considering, many of those less expensive softeners are manufactured by one company under various brand names.

You will not know when hardness is 10 gpg vs 20 gpg so the usual procedure is to program for the highest hardness level expected. As you appear to be intending to install and program the softener yourself, it is highly advised to purchase a Hach 5b Hardness Test Kit which would also permit periodic testing the water exiting the softener.

Using your average monthly consumption of 5,500 gals / 30 days = 184 gal/day X 20 gpg = 3,680 grains softening capacity required/day.
A 1 cuft softener programmed to use an efficient 8 lbs salt per regeneration cycle, will regenerate 24,000 grains usable capacity.
24K / 3680 = 6 days between regen cycles.

It is generally desirable to regenerate not more often than 1X weekly. A 1.5 cuft softener programmed to use 12 lbs salt (8 lbs/cuft), will regenerate 36K usable capacity which will require regeneration approx every 9 days. That 1.5 cuft unit would be even more efficient if programmed to use 9 lbs salt to deliver 30K grains usable capacity which then will need regeneration every 8 days.
 
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ditttohead

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Fleck 5600sxt, the real problem with the big box store units is that few if any field techs will even look at the big box store units. The 5600 platform has been around since the 70's and is nearly bullet proof.
 

RV1458

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That 1.5 cuft unit would be even more efficient if programmed to use 9 lbs salt to deliver 30K grains usable capacity which then will need regeneration every 8 days.

Thanks for all the feedback. I decided to get the Fleck 5600SXT-48k. Sounds like that is a better size and will operate much more efficiently, and over the long term should save quite a bit of salt/money.

Per bannerman, I should set this up for 9lbs of salt per regeneration. Not sure how to do that now, but I'm sure I'll figure it out once I have the owners manual to review.

I also need to determine how much to set in reserve. What do you recommend? 10%? 15%?
 

RV1458

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You will not know when hardness is 10 gpg vs 20 gpg so the usual procedure is to program for the highest hardness level expected.

Actually, I do plan to adjust it a few times a year. The water softness changes seasonally and is softest in the winter and hardest in the summer. I'm planning to adjust it at least 4x a year to operate more efficiently.
 

Reach4

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I also need to determine how much to set in reserve. What do you recommend? 10%? 15%?
I would use the Reserve Capacity in gallons. If you do that, 60 gallons per person is common. Change RC to change the number of gallons. The example below uses RC=120, which would be typical with 2 people. Reserving a percent makes less sense to me, in that as you change H, a percent would not give a fixed number of gallons. RC has you enter gallons directly.

5600SXT often comes with BLFC=0.5, but you need to check that. As the BLFC changes, the BF changes inversely. The example below uses 0.5, but you should check.
Change H (hardness) with the season.

salt lb/cuft = 6 ; A choice ( efficiency vs capacity)
BLFC = 0.5 ; Brine Refill rate GPM
cubic ft resin = 1.5 ; ft3 resin = (nominal grains)/32,000
Raw hardness = 15 ; including any compensation
People = 2 ; gallons affects reserve calc
Estimated gal/day = 120 ; 60 gal per person typical calc
Estimated days/regen = 16.7 ; Computed days ignoring reserve ***your historical usage is actually higher, so you probably have more than 2 people. So your estimated days number would be smaller****


Fleck 5600SXT Settings:
DF = Gal ; Units
VT = dF1b ; Downflw/Upflw, Single Backwash
CT = Fd ; Meter Delayed regen trigger
NT = 1 ; Number of tanks
C = 30.0 ; capacity in 1000 grains
H = 15 ; Hardness-- compensate if needed
RS = rc ; rc says use gallons vs percent
RC = 120 6000/30=200; Reserve capacity gallons
DO = 28 ; Day Override (assuming city water)
RT = 2:00 ; Regen time (default 2 AM)
BW = 5 ; Backwash (minutes)
Bd = 60 ; Brine draw minutes (#0 Injector - Red would match this OK)
RR = 5 ; Rapid Rinse minutes
BF = 6 ; Brine fill minutes
FM = usually t0.7 ; flow meter, make note of what is there
https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?attachments/img_fleck5600sxt_flow-png.31592/) shows turbine and paddlewheel if there is any doubt.
 
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ditttohead

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The 5800LXT is probably the simplest valve for this application. The hardness setting is on the front screen. It can be changed by a 2nd grader. No remembering how to do it, no looking back in the manual. Simply set it and lock it. Of course the 5800LXT is available by dealers, not online sellers.
 

RV1458

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The 5800LXT is probably the simplest valve for this application. The hardness setting is on the front screen. It can be changed by a 2nd grader. No remembering how to do it, no looking back in the manual. Simply set it and lock it. Of course the 5800LXT is available by dealers, not online sellers.
Sent you a message, let me know if you didn't get it.
 

RV1458

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[QUOTE
Fleck 5600SXT Settings:
DF = Gal ; Units
VT = dF1b ; Downflw/Upflw, Single Backwash
CT = Fd ; Meter Delayed regen trigger
NT = 1 ; Number of tanks
C = 30.0 ; capacity in 1000 grains
H = 15 ; Hardness-- compensate if needed
RS = rc ; rc says use gallons vs percent
RC = 120 6000/30=200; Reserve capacity gallons
DO = 28 ; Day Override (assuming city water)
RT = 2:00 ; Regen time (default 2 AM)
BW = 5 ; Backwash (minutes)
Bd = 60 ; Brine draw minutes (#0 Injector - Red would match this OK)
RR = 5 ; Rapid Rinse minutes
BF = 6 ; Brine fill minutes
FM = usually t0.7 ; flow meter, make note of what is there

https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?attachments/img_fleck5600sxt_flow-png.31592/) shows turbine and paddlewheel if there is any doubt.[/QUOTE]

I ended up getting the 5600SXT-48k that I'd been considering. I believe I understand the settings posted by Reach4 above, which are using 6lbs of salt per cubic ft of resin per regen. 6 minutes x .5 GPM x 3 lbs of salt/gallon = 9 lbs of salt total. 9lbs of salt should regenerate enough to get 30,000 grains of capacity back.

I've also read that it takes anywhere from 15 to 18 lbs of salt/per cubic of ft of resin to do a full regeneration. For a 1.5 cubic ft system this would be 22.5 lbs to 27 lbs of salt.

However, the instructions that came from Ohio Pure water say to set C=48 and BF=12 which means that 18 pounds of salt would be used, which is only 12lbs per cubic ft of resin. This is well below the 15-18lb numbers I've seen posted on this forum. Which makes me wonder if the Ohio Pure Water settings wouldn't actually fully regen the system (despite setting at C=48), or if there is something else that I don't understand.
 

Bannerman

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The salt dose is directly proportional to the amount of capacity to be regenerated, but that ratio also establishes the salt efficiency.

As 1 cuft of resin has a total softening capacity of 32,000 grains when the resin is first manufactured, the amount of salt required to regenerate all 32K would be 18 lbs. This is not a realistic usable capacity as some resin will be fractured during manufacturing, installation and during regeneration over time. The fractured beads will be flushed to drain thereby reducing the softening capacity available. Due to these common losses, 1 cuft of resin is therefore typically anticipated to contain 30K grains capacity total, therby requiring 15 lbs salt to regenerate.

For your 1.5 cuft softener, 15 lbs/cuft (22.5 lbs) will regenerate 45,000 grains. That salt dose setting will be highly inefficient (2,000 gains/lb).

The lower salt doses, while they reduce the usable capacity between regeneration cycles, also raise the salt efficiency.

6 lbs/cuft (9 lbs) will restore 30K grains usable capacity (3,333 grains/lb)
8 lbs/cuft (12 lbs) will restore 36K grains usable capacity (3,000 grains/lb)
10 lbs/cuft (15 lbs) will restore 40,500 grains usable capacity (2,700 grains/lb)

Often the capacity of new resin is stated on sales literature or packaging. That capacity is not realistic nor achievable in the real world. The preferred higher efficiency settings are not always clearly stated in the user manual.
 
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RV1458

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That's all consistent with my understanding, so why is Ohio Pure Water only recommending 12lbs for a full regeneration?

OHP has a good reputation here, but it seems like the settings they recommend are wrong...
 

Bannerman

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Which makes me wonder if the Ohio Pure Water settings wouldn't actually fully regen the system (despite setting at C=48)
The C=48 programs the amount of capacity used before regeneration is triggered. It is the salt dose that establishes the amount of capacity to be restored.

but it seems like the settings they recommend are wrong...
Yes.
 
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