Settings for 5812 XTR2 and regeneration questions

[Riccardo]

Good Day all,
I bought a Fleck 5812 XTR2 with 2.5 cu/ft 8% cross link resin and was wondering what are the best settings.
What is the difference between down flow and up flow. Can i change that on the valve via software? I read somewhere that if there is a marking on the valve it should be down flow/up flow. Also what do i need to check for all the settings. Example Back flow Drain size etc. When i turned on the unit to check if it works it was set to time based regeneration which i think is not beneficial. I have water coming from the city and it has 28ppm with 5 people. I have read some post on the forum but i'm still confused.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated since the Fleck Manual doesn't really explain the benefits of down flow/up flow and regeneration type.
Than you much.

 

[Reach4]

What is the difference between down flow and up flow. Can i change that on the valve via software?

No. You probably have downflow. That is usually the best choice. Upflow requires a different piston. When you check your existing settings, you will see that.

Expect to find a sticker identifying the BLFC and DLFC. You will need to lift the cover to see that. Then view from the right (as you face the display, and near the rear. On mine, I think it is black on white. Tell us what you have... probably 0.125 or 0.25 gpm for the BLFC.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Riccardo]

Thank you Reach4, I will check all the Parts and stickers and will post once i have the information
Found the video which talks about the dot on the piston indication what flow it is

Reading in the forum and found this, but don't know exactly what all these settings mean
DF: GAL
VT: 5812
RF: dF2B
CT: Fd
C: 70.0
H: 20
RS: cr
DO: 21
RT: 2:00
B1: 7
BD: 60
B2: 3
RR: 7
BF: 27
FM: t1.2
RE: OFF
VR: OFF

 

[Bannerman]

I have water coming from the city and it has 28ppm

Recommended to test water hardness at your location using a Hach-5B Total Hardness test kit. The Hach kit reads hardness in grains per gallon which is the measurement used for programming the softener (your example: H:20 is 20 grains per gallon hardness). 1 grain per gallon is equal to 17.1 ppm hardness. If your water only contains 28 ppm hardness, that is less than 2 grains.

 

[Riccardo]

Will put that on my to-do list and will reply once I have all information, thank you Bannerman

 

[ditttohead]

Upflow/downflow... Upflow can be technically better but real world... not worth the headaches. It is a very complex and long topic to go over allthe nuances, pros/cons etc of the differences. Just trust the pro on this one, downflow regen is fine... Upflow should be left to the more technically inclined. I do training seminars and can adjust the training to make Upflow or downflow "the obvious choice..." based on the customers marketing needs.

 

[Riccardo]

Ok Good Morning all,
I have all the Numbers, here there are:
Hardness: 25 grains
Chlorine: 1 ppm
Iron: 0.1 ppm
Copper: 0
Nitrate: 0
Fleck 5812 XTR2 Downflow
Injector #0 Red
Hard Water Flow regeneration
Drain Flow 4 GPM
Then there is a sticker that shows
0.25 GPM
.75 LB Salt/Min
See pictures

Thank you all in advance

 

[Reach4]

I have water coming from the city and it has 28ppm

Presuming 28 grains, consider these settings.

They are not the only good settings. These numbers are adjusted to account for the granularity of the brine fill. This is not commonly done.

With 5 people, I calculated 300 gallons per day. However the programming suggested below tells the softener to compute the reserve based on experience. So you don't need to tune anything in that regard. It will take some time for the reserve that it calculates to adjust to your patterns.

A red injector for a 2.5 cubic ft softener is unusual. I would want to swap it out for either a #1 white (BD=80) or #2 Blue (BD=60). While longer brine draw can increase efficiency a bit, that increase the time that the softener is in bypass. Usually injectors are selected to take about 15 minutes to draw the brine, and BD about 4x (or at least 3 x) that time. Thus BD=60 is common. The symptom of BD being too short is some extra residual salt in the first gallons from the softener after it is back in service. I would ask your dealer to send you a #2 blue injector (or a #1). Some dealers would have supplied a #3 Injector - Yellow. That is bigger than optimal for a 2.5 cuft softener.

WAIT : XTR2... below I had come up with settings for SXT. They do not apply to you. You may or may not get any useful info from the stuff below. A quick look at the XTR2 manual did not tell me what you do to tell the controller about the small injector.

One more thing: make sure there is a meter turbine! If it came set up for timed use, there could be a blank cover (same as the injector cover) in that spot. The turbine meter has two deep semicircular recesses.


System info (not programmed)
salt lb/cuft : 8.1 ; A choice ( efficiency vs capacity)
BLFC : 0.25 ; Brine Refill rate GPM
cubic ft resin : 2.5 ; Same as (nominal grains/32,000)
Raw hardness : 28 ; including iron etc
Estimated gal/day ; 300 ; 60 gal per person typical calc (can tune)
Est days/regen ; 6.30 ; presuming days each use reserve capacity

System info (not programmed)
salt lb/cuft : 8.1 ; A choice ( efficiency vs capacity)
BLFC : 0.25 ; Brine Refill rate GPM
cubic ft resin : 2.5 ; Same as (nominal grains/32,000)
Raw hardness : 28 ; including iron etc
Estimated gal/day ; 300 ; 60 gal per person prediction calc (tunes automaticaly)
Est days/regen ; 6.30 ; presuming days each use reserve capacity

Fleck 5810SXT Settings:
DF = Gal ; Units
VT = 5810 ; Valve type
RF = dF2b ; Downflow, Double Backwash
CT = Fd ; Meter Delayed regen trigger
C = 60.5 ; Meter Delayed regen trigger
H = 32 ; Hardness grains after comp factor
RS = cr ; Cr = base reserve on recent experience
DO = 28 ; Day Override (typ 28 if no iron/Mn)
RT = 2:00 ; Regen time (default 2 AM)
B1 = 5 ; Backwash 1 (minutes) [3...10]
Bd = 120 ; Brine draw minutes #0 RED Injector!
B2 = 4 ; Backwash 2 (minutes)[3...10]
RR = 10 ; Rapid Rinse minutes
BF = 27 ; Backwash 2 (minutes)[3...10]
FM = t1.2 (usual) ; t1.2 is default flow meter
RE = OFF ; Relay
VR = OFF ; ?

 

[Riccardo]

See attached settings, what do you guy think?

 

[ditttohead]

Change the draw to 110 minutes.

Draw rate of the #0 injector is approximately .25 gpm. At 20 pounds of salt total you should have about 7 gallons of brine to draw out. The brine draw/slow rinse cycle should be 4X the draw time.

These are simply guidelines. From a purely technical standpoint the slower brine draws are more efficient.

 

[Riccardo]

Thank you Dittohead, everything else looks good? What if I change the Injector size, then i could lower the draw rate?

 

[ditttohead]

Yes, a larger injector would allow you to shorten up the brine draw time. In general we try to do a 10-15 minute brine draw with 45-50 minutes of slow rinse.

 

[Riccardo]

so looking at a table from Pentair 5812 Installer Manual i should go with a yellow injector since i have 2.5 cu/ft of resin

 

[Riccardo]

Also when I installed the Resin in my tank i forgot to add the gravel first since it was packaged in another box and did not see it. Is gravel critical?

 

[Bannerman]

everything else looks good?

Setting 8 lbs/cuft salt dose in 2.5 cuft, will restore 60K grains capacity, not 80K grains. The capacity setting should be reduced to 60K.

At 20 pounds of salt total you should have about 7 gallons of brine to draw out.

The current brine refill setting 16, only provides for 4 gallons fill (16 X 0.25 BLFC). As Ditttohead specified 7 gallons fill, the fill time needs to be increased to 28 minutes.

To add the gravel, simply remove the control valve, block the riser tube to prevent gravel from entering, and add the gravel on top of the resin. The gravel will settle to the bottom during the next few regen cycles.

As this is a single tank softener, regeneration should not be set to immediate but is to be delayed until water is not normally used, typically 2am when the household is sleeping.

 

[Reach4]

Add the gravel. It will move to the bottom during the first backwash.

Here are some prototype settings. I think some of the display items are not changeable directly. So this is experimental, and is there for discussion. The number that I am wondering most about is
Step#5 tank refill. Part of that is a difference in hardness because I added more compensation for higher hardness. Part of that is 2.4 vs 2.5 media volume.

Note the backwash times and rinse time variations are not critical.

The thing about this being set to timed before I suspect is not the case. In softener use, you want the day override also, for times when your water use drops a lot. It sets an upper limit on time, and 30 days is good for city water usually. For your water with a touch of iron, you could reduce that some. But your expected usage is such that you are going to regen every week or so anyway.

----------------------
System info (not programmed)
salt lb/cuft : 8 ; A choice ( efficiency vs capacity)
BLFC : 0.25 ; Brine Refill rate GPM
cubic ft resin : 2.5 ; Same as (nominal grains/32,000)
Raw hardness : 28 ; including iron etc
H comp factor ; 1.16 0 Hardness compensation
Estimated gal/day ; 300 ; 60 gal per person prediction (auto-tunes)
Est days/regen ; 6.2 ; presuming days each use estimated

XTR2 Settings (prototype)
Language: English
Units: US
Non-factory: off
regen type: softener delayed
regen.flow: downflow 2x backwash
Meter type: 1.25” turbine
valve 5812
Day override/time: On/30
cont. flow detect” on
media volume: 2.5
salt dosage 8
blfc size: 0.25
hardness: 32
capacity grains: 60.0
remote sig dur: ???
Step #1 backwash: 5
Step #2 draw: 110 ;NOTE
Step #3 backwash: 4
Step #4 rapid rinse: 10
Step#5 tank refill: 26.66;WHY so low before ???

 

[Riccardo]

Thank you guys so much for the input, I'm glad a found this forum and people are active.

 

[Riccardo]

So I changed the parameters to all the suggestions.
Before startup I will put in gravel, thanks for the tip

 

[Riccardo]

Add the gravel. It will move to the bottom during the first backwash.

Step#5 tank refill: 26.66;WHY so low before ???

Don't know why the system calculated it

 

[Riccardo]

WAIT : XTR2... below I had come up with settings for SXT. They do not apply to you. You may or may not get any useful info from the stuff below. A quick look at the XTR2 manual did not tell me what you do to tell the controller about the small injector.

One more thing: make sure there is a meter turbine! If it came set up for timed use, there could be a blank cover (same as the injector cover) in that spot. The turbine meter has two deep semicircular recesses.

Yes it came with a meter turbine. Also I figured that some settings don't apply to me since it was an xtr2