Water softener settings help

12 years ago

I just installed a 32,000 grain capacity softener that uses a Fleck 2510SXT metered valve. We have three people in the home and our water hardness is not too bad with a little iron. So when I plugged in the setting of 10, based on our water test, the meter on the softener said something like 2600 gallons before it would have to recharge. The other setting is how many days until it would do a recharge if the capacity was not met, and that is set to 14. So my question, we don't use a lot of water, so we will probably never hit the metered mark of 2600, which means it will recharge every 14 days. Is 14 days too long to wait for a recharge?

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Comments (4)

User
12 years ago
"...hardness is not too bad with a little iron" is not sufficient data to calculate the proper settings for your softener.

If you bought a 32k (1 cu ft) softener from just the scant information you posted it is undersized.

With a correctly sized softener for your water conditions and water use when using the softener to treat iron one generally doesn't want to go longer than 3 or 4 days between regenerations or you can foul the resin. You'll also want to be doing routine resin cleaning.

Since you bought what you bought post the following info and we'll get it setup as best we can...

Water system or well?
hardness
iron (ferric and ferrous)
manganese
pH
TDS
sodium
copper
arsenic
nitrates and bacteria (if on a well)
# of bathrooms
size of the plumbing at softener location
SFR of the well or plumbing
JMphoto
Original Author
12 years ago
Sorry, that was very vague. We did have the water tested. I don't have the results of the water test in front of me, I will post those as soon I get home. I also failed to mention that we also installed a Sulfur/Iron removal backwashing filter prior to the softener which backwashes every 3 days.
We are on well water, and we did have some coliform bacteria in the water so we also installed a Sterilight Silver UV light. So the system is, two 20" big blue filters (a 20 micron then a 5 micron for sediment) then the iron/sulfur pro, then the softener then the UV light. We have three bathrooms. This is a brand new home and the plumbing is 1"PVC from the well tank through the entire system then it goes down to PEX at the distribution block. I'll post the iron and hardness results later. Thanks for your help.
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User
12 years ago
Have you had the water tested after the iron removal hardware to make sure that is doing its job?
JMphoto
Original Author
12 years ago
Yes, we had the water tested after the iron filter and it was ND. Here is our water results from a test taken from water from the well tank.

Hardness 6 GPG (grains per gallon)
Iron 0.4 .g/l (ferrous/dissolved)
Manganese - ND
pH 7.4 units
TDS (total dissolved solids) 88 ppm