Softener Settings

[Paddington]

Hi..Just wondering if I could get some help with the proper water softener settings for my needs. I just bought a new house that has a water softener installed. Looks like it's a Clack 80,000 grain tank with a Fleck 7000sxt valve. It's a 3,700 sq foot house with 4 full baths. In looking at our recent water usage at our old house it looks like we average between 8,000 and 11,000 gallons of water per month.

I found the manual for the valve so I think I'm comfortable with making any changes I'm just not sure what the correct settings should be for our usage.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thx!!

 

[Reach4]

Hi..Just wondering if I could get some help with the proper water softener settings for my needs. I just bought a new house that has a water softener installed. Looks like it's a Clack 80,000 grain tank with a Fleck 7000sxt valve. It's a 3,700 sq foot house with 4 full baths. In looking at our recent water usage at our old house it looks like we average between 8,000 and 11,000 gallons of water per month.

I found the manual for the valve so I think I'm comfortable with making any changes I'm just not sure what the correct settings should be for our usage.

The hardness is an important number for that purpose. You also need the BLFC, although that is often 0.127 on the 7000. Those two values can cover most of the info needed. Confirm that the tank is 13" x 54".The number of people, bathrooms, etc are not important for programming that unit. Iron and manganese are important if the water is not treated city water. If it is city water, the water department or water company can give hardness. If they give a range, usually you will program for the hardest.

You want to get an Hach 5-B hardness test. That can check the actual hardness of the incoming water, and it can check the softened water to see how things are working. If you are on your own a well, you will want a lab water test. I like http://www.karlabs.com/watertestkit/ kit 90. Figure about 2 weeks after you order to get the kit by mail, sample, mail the samples back, and receive the results by email. This gives good value for money for most situations IMO. I am not a pro. Typically county tests are much less complete, and may not even measure hardness or iron.

Remember that you don't run the water for the lawn through the softener, and yet that was going through your water meter.

Note:removed initial settings example, since they don't apply to your system.

Edit: Record the original settings before making changes. In the absence of contrary info, I would leave the existing H as it is.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Akpsdvan]

Why the need to change the settings?
Is the water changing before the system cleans?
If the system has a meter then the meter tells when to clean, use 1000 gallons and then the next cleaning time it will clean.

To often I have had to go and put back the settings because the new owner JUST Had to change a setting thinking that it would be better only to find out that they FUBAR the system.

 

[Reach4]

Why the need to change the settings?
Is the water changing before the system cleans?
If the system has a meter then the meter tells when to clean, use 1000 gallons and then the next cleaning time it will clean.

Good point. The current settings may be well chosen and suitable for Paddington's use. Probably Paddington would be better off to tell us what the current settings are first.

 

[Paddington]

The hardness is an important number for that purpose. You also need the BLFC, although that is often 0.127 on the 7000. Those two values can cover most of the info needed. Confirm that the tank is 13" x 54".The number of people, bathrooms, etc are not important for programming that unit. Iron and manganese are important if the water is not treated city water. If it is city water, the water department or water company can give hardness. If they give a range, usually you will program for the hardest.

You want to get an Hach 5-B hardness test. That can check the actual hardness of the incoming water, and it can check the softened water to see how things are working. If you are on your own a well, you will want a lab water test. I like http://www.karlabs.com/watertestkit/ kit 90. Figure about 2 weeks after you order to get the kit by mail, sample, mail the samples back, and receive the results by email. This gives good value for money for most situations IMO. I am not a pro. Typically county tests are much less complete, and may not even measure hardness or iron.

Remember that you don't run the water for the lawn through the softener, and yet that was going through your water meter.

This is a typical example if we assume H=18 and DLFC=0.125:
System info (not programmed)
salt lb/cuft : 6 ; A choice ( efficiency vs capacity)
BLFC : 0.125 ; Brine Refill rate GPM
cubic ft resin : 2.5 ; Same as (nominal grains/32,000)
Raw hardness : 18.0 ; including iron etc
Estimated gal/day : 260.0 ; 60 gal per person typical calc
Estimated days each regen : 9.7 ; presuming days each use reserve capacity

Fleck 7000SXT Settings:
DF = Gal ; Units
VT = dF2b ; Downflw/Upflw, Double Backwash dFFF=brine first
CT = Fd ; Meter Delayed regen trigger
C = 50.0 ; capacity in 1000 grains
H = 18.0 ; Hardness grains after compensation (unknown iron)
RS = cr ; Cr = base reserve on recent experience
CR = 0.0 ; 0 is default (leave it)
DO = 7 ; Day Override (typ 28 if no iron/Mn)
RT = 2:00 ; Regen time (default 2 AM)
B1 = 8.0 ; Backwash 1 (minutes)
Bd = 60.0 ; Brine draw minutes
B2 = 5.0 ; Backwash 2 (minutes)
RR = 10.0 ; Rapid Rinse minutes
BF = 40.0 ; Brine fill minutes
FM = t1.2 (usual) ; t1.2 is default flow meter

If H is another value, you can change just that one number.

Edit: Record the original settings before making changes. In the absence of contrary info, I would leave the existing H as it is.

 

[Paddington]

Sorry! Showing my water softener stupidity here. Of course you would need the water hardness. I just tested the water at the hose bib on the side of the house using the 5b test and it tested at 12 grains. I also tested the cold at the kitchen sink and it tested at 12 grains as well. So then I tested the hot at the kitchen sink and the cold at one of the other bathrooms and they both tested at less than 1 grain so the softener definitely appears to be working. It's a newer house so it looks like they just bypassed the cold at the kitchen sink.

I also went out to the softener and wrote down all of the settings. Here is where everything's currently set:

DF - Gal
VT - dF26
CT - Fd
C - 60
H - 20
RS - SF or 5F (not sure whether it is an S or 5)
SF - 15
DO - 14
RT - 2:00am
B1 - 10
BD - 80
B2 - 5
RR - 10
BF - 27
FM - t1.2

the only thing I can definitely tell is off is the hardness. It's set at 20 but I'm only getting a reading of 12 on the main line coming into the house.

Again, all of this is for an 80,000 grain tank, a fleck 7000sxt, and what will be water usage averaging between 8,000 and 10,000 gallons per month. And as far as the water usage is concerned we live in AZ and we have no grass so our only irrigation consists of drip lines for plants so I wouldn't imagine that this would have much of an impact on the water usage.

So besides the hardness does anything else look off and would anything else need to be adjusted based on our water usage?

Thanks!

 

[ditttohead]

DF - Gal
VT - dF26
CT - Fd
C - 60
H - 15
RS - SF or 5F (not sure whether it is an S or 5) (set to cr if available, only on newer valves, no SF will be shown, this is an automated reserve setting)
SF - 15
DO - 21
RT - 2:00am
B1 - 5
BD - 80
B2 - 3
RR - 5
BF - 27
FM - t1.2

 

[Reach4]

How are you measuring the 12 grains? Is this city water?

Your softener is set up for 8 pounds of salt per cubic ft giving C=60 presuming that your DLFC is 0.25 rather than 0.125. Look for a label for the DLFC value.

If you want settings for 6 pounds per cubic ft, let us know. 8 pounds per cubic ft is very reasonable. 6 is a little more salt-efficeint.

The Bf=80 looks like thought went into that. If you were to check the color of the injector, we could compute that, or you could time how long it takes for the brine to be drawn out during brine draw. Bd is usually set to give 25% of the time to actually draw brine. Thus your brine should be drawn out in about 20 minutes.

Your SF=SF and SF=15 says to leave 15% of your capacity in reserve for the last day. If instead you went to SF=cr and CR=0, the controller would watch your use and compute a value based on history.

For a blue injector I compute Bd= 62 minutes and for a white I compute 88 minutes. People don't normally try to compute it to that level, so I suspect you have a blue injector. If you dropped to 6 pounds per cubic ft of salt, my Bd numbers would drop drop to 47 for blue or 66 for white. Going higher than the numbers I calculated are OK. It only extends the time that the unit is in bypass by a short time.

 

[Paddington]

Yes, it's city water and I measured it using a Hatch water test kit. The DLFC is a .25 and I'm not sure about the injectors because I couldn't figure out how to get the system depressurized so that I could get the cap off to see what color it was.

 

[Reach4]

Yes, it's city water and I measured it using a Hatch water test kit. The DLFC is a .25 and I'm not sure about the injectors because I couldn't figure out how to get the system depressurized so that I could get the cap off to see what color it was.

If you want do depressurize, I know you can turn off the incoming water. Open a faucet that is lower than the controller, and let the water pressure drop to zero.

The numbers that Ditttohead posted are very good. Here is another good alternative:

System info (not programmed)
salt lb/cuft : 6 ; 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 : 17.0 ; including iron etc
Estimated gal/day : 180.0 ; 60 gal per person typical calc
Estimated days each regen : 14.9 ; presuming days each use reserve capacity

Fleck 7000SXT Settings:
DF = Gal ; Units
VT = dF2b ; Downflw/Upflw, Double Backwash
CT = Fd ; Meter Delayed regen trigger
C = 50.0 ; capacity in 1000 grains
H = 12.0 ; Hardness grains after compensation
RS = cr ; Cr = base reserve on recent experience
CR = 0.0 ; 0 is default (leave it)
DO =28 ; Day Override (typ 28 if no iron/Mn)
RT = 2:00 ; Regen time (default 2 AM)
B1 = 8.0 ; Backwash 1 (minutes)
Bd = minimum 47 if blue, 66 if white ; Brine draw minutes
B2 = 5.0 ; Backwash 2 (minutes)
RR = 10.0 ; Rapid Rinse minutes
BF = 20.0 ; Brine fill minutes
FM = t1.2 (usual) ; t1.2 is default flow meter

However you do it, you should check your softened water softness a little before the unit is ready to regenerate. If you see more than 1 grain, increase the hardness setting.

 

[Paddington]

Thanks!! Got it all dialed in and I think I'm all set. The only question I have is on the RS = cr. I made that change but your next step was to make sure the CR=0. After I changed the RS to cr I never got an option to check or change the CR value. Is it possible my valve allows you to set the RS to cr but does not allow to change the CR value or am I just missing something?

 

[Reach4]

The only question I have is on the RS = cr. I made that change but your next step was to make sure the CR=0. After I changed the RS to cr I never got an option to check or change the CR value.

I was going by these steps from the service manual:

7. Reserve Selection (Display Code RS)
10.Variable Reserve (Display Code CR)​

I don't have a 7000, so I did not actually try it. That CR number doesn't have a function with the variable reserve, so it would make sense that the controller not present it as an option once you set RS=cr.

 

[ditttohead]

DF - Gal
VT - dF26
CT - Fd
C - 60
H - 15
RS - SF
SF - 15
DO - 21
RT - 2:00am
B1 - 5
BD - 80
B2 - 3
RR - 5
BF - 27
FM - t1.2

 

[Paddington]

I'm all set. Thank you both so much for the responses.