David Andruczyk
New Member
I have an old Kinetico Model 60 (dual tank) that came with the house we purchased last year. It's about 17 years old. I found it wasn't worked shortly after we moved in and spent many hours, cleaning and rebuilding the entire unit including scrubbing out the brine tank (the previous owner used rock salt at least once at one point), it's float/valves and rebuilding the control heads and removing the 17 years of hard water/mineral deposits that have built up in the unit. It DOES soften water now, but still occasionally screws things up (sometimes after a regen we get salty water for a while, sometimes not). and it is still not softening down to near zero Gpg as hoped as deposits are showing up again on faucets and I'm fed up with the kinetico's tempramental issues.
The entire well processing system consists of the well, hydrogen peroxide injection via stenner pump where the water comes into the house, static mixer, pressure tank, 40 gallon contact tank, 9x48 charcoal filter tank with Fleck 5600 backwashing valve, 20um particulate filter, the kinetico model 60 softener followed by a 5um filter and a UV sanitizer. All of that is necessary as the raw well water has a nasty sulfur smell, high dissolved solids, is very hard and has occasional bacteria from the farm across the street. The hot water (propane) tank uses a powered anode in lieu of the factory magnesium or aluminum anodes.
The kinetico softener DOES have the correct wheel (#4) and float/notch settings as per the factory manuals for the raw well water which is very hard at 28gpg (tested via titration test kit 4x and averaged together).
It is using the appropriate Softener grade Morton Sodium chloride salt, and IS using salt as expected.
The resin was replaced last summer (expensive).
Kinetico as a company SUCKS to deal with, there are no dealers within a reasonable distance of my location, and getting information about their products from corporate or the nearest dealer was far more difficult than it should have been. I find their design innovative in some respects and poor in others (bad ideas like full line pressure on the brine line when not in regeneration, so if that valve leaks you have a potentially gigantic mess on your hands if you failed to run the overflow to a proper drain))
I'm looking to see if the experts here know if there is a way that I can swap out the control heads and keep my existing tanks/resin/tubes and use an off-the-shelf head set that is DESIGNED for two tanks (like the kinetico model 60), as well as replacing the brine float valve with one that isn't a proprietary kinetico product. From what I know the tanks are STANDARD threads 2.5" 8tpi. The new heads would have to be able to reliably soften water as hard as 30+gpg. Power hookup is no problem, as there is already power to run the backwashing charcoal filter. I'd prefer a metered valve so as to not be wasting as much water+H2O2 and wear-and-tear on my well pump with a brain-dead timed unit.
Basically I want to reuse my two (kinetico) tanks (8x48), with the riser tubes (1" OD) and resin (new last fall) and brine drum (I know the brine float valve assembly would need to be changed to be something not kinetico specific.)
Part numbers, thoughts and ideas are welcome
Thanks!
The entire well processing system consists of the well, hydrogen peroxide injection via stenner pump where the water comes into the house, static mixer, pressure tank, 40 gallon contact tank, 9x48 charcoal filter tank with Fleck 5600 backwashing valve, 20um particulate filter, the kinetico model 60 softener followed by a 5um filter and a UV sanitizer. All of that is necessary as the raw well water has a nasty sulfur smell, high dissolved solids, is very hard and has occasional bacteria from the farm across the street. The hot water (propane) tank uses a powered anode in lieu of the factory magnesium or aluminum anodes.
The kinetico softener DOES have the correct wheel (#4) and float/notch settings as per the factory manuals for the raw well water which is very hard at 28gpg (tested via titration test kit 4x and averaged together).
It is using the appropriate Softener grade Morton Sodium chloride salt, and IS using salt as expected.
The resin was replaced last summer (expensive).
Kinetico as a company SUCKS to deal with, there are no dealers within a reasonable distance of my location, and getting information about their products from corporate or the nearest dealer was far more difficult than it should have been. I find their design innovative in some respects and poor in others (bad ideas like full line pressure on the brine line when not in regeneration, so if that valve leaks you have a potentially gigantic mess on your hands if you failed to run the overflow to a proper drain))
I'm looking to see if the experts here know if there is a way that I can swap out the control heads and keep my existing tanks/resin/tubes and use an off-the-shelf head set that is DESIGNED for two tanks (like the kinetico model 60), as well as replacing the brine float valve with one that isn't a proprietary kinetico product. From what I know the tanks are STANDARD threads 2.5" 8tpi. The new heads would have to be able to reliably soften water as hard as 30+gpg. Power hookup is no problem, as there is already power to run the backwashing charcoal filter. I'd prefer a metered valve so as to not be wasting as much water+H2O2 and wear-and-tear on my well pump with a brain-dead timed unit.
Basically I want to reuse my two (kinetico) tanks (8x48), with the riser tubes (1" OD) and resin (new last fall) and brine drum (I know the brine float valve assembly would need to be changed to be something not kinetico specific.)
Part numbers, thoughts and ideas are welcome
Thanks!
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