Which Fleck valve do you have? How long has it been in service? Is this a DIY install or did you have a local pro install it? Have you taken any extra measures to strip iron from the resin?

What are the softener's setting? Specifically:

1. C (capacity)
2. H (hardness)
3. BF (brine fill)
4. BLFC size (this info should be on a 3/4" x 3/4" sticker on the valve. It should be in the range of 0.125, 0.25, or 0.5 gpm)
5. DO (day override)

Does the water appear to be soft (analysis is the only way to actually tell) immediately after a regen?

It could possible be a salt bridge. To break it up, pour a couple of gallons of hot water around the brine well (tube inside salt tank) & regen system. Repeat once the regen is done. If you did have a salt bridge, this may cause the salt to drop quite a bit.

Hi. I have a Fleck 5000 Proflo SXT 80K capacity with a 13x54 "Vortech" tank with 2.5 cu ft "high capacity cation 8% crosslink resin".

The settings are as follows: for hardness is 50, brine fill is 18 minutes, day override is 10.

I could find no sticker with BLFC. Should I remove the cover (I already removed the slide on cover). All I found is a sticker that says 2.4 GPM draw flow.

The cold water improves after a regen. The hot water never seems to be anything but rock hard. Soon even the cold gets hard and also takes on an unpleasant metallic smell. I'll check to see how many days this takes since it cycled last night.

If it's any help, I have a RO system for my kitchen drinking water. The plastic inlet tubing stains red within a few days of replacing it. I've tested my well water for bacteria and it was negative.

The softener is a self install, although it just replaced an older softener so the plumbing was intact already. I installed it in July 2014. No measures to remove iron.

Thank you for your help.

Dan

Thanks for the info, deepdrop. I wanted to see how much salt your softener should reasonably be using. Biermech could be correct - you may have a salt bridge preventing your softener from using salt, but forming a salt bridge in less than a year would be unusual. Is your household, by chance, using a lot less water recently?

Rather than pour hot water in, I would remove all of the salt and water from the brine tank and take a look at it. This way you can see exactly what has happened.

If you force your softener into a regen and stay there, when it goes into its brine draw step, wait about ten minutes and check the water going to drain. Is it salty? A little salty or really salty?

Has the hot water ever been soft? Is it possibly you aren't softening all of the water in your home?

Other things to check:

1. Look at your brine line to ensure it is clear. Check the brine line flow control to ensure it is not plugged.
2. Look at the injector to ensure it is clear/not plugged.
3. Check the brine valve for debris.
4. Enter diagnostic programming mode. With a faucet running somewhere in the house, go through the parameters to ensure the meter is actually reading flow.

I'll check these things and report back. Thank you very much again.

Hi, I realize it's been a while but I wanted to collect some data and see if it helped somebody figure out what's going on.

There is not a salt bridge, the brine line is clear and not plugged. The injector is not plugged and there's no debris. The meter is monitoring water use.

I purchased a Hach 5B kit as I had seen recommended elsewhere on this forum. I monitored hardness daily of cold and hot water and also how much soft water my softener display indicated was remaining. I don't know if it's typical, but sometimes the indicator would turn blue and then revert to pink within a few seconds, especially with the hot water.

When I noticed the water getting hard, I set it for a manual regen that night, so during this time I did NOT rely on the automatic regeneration.

Day cold water gr/g hot water gr/g gallons of soft water remaining on display

1 5 20 1102

2 4 13 1000

3 4 7 659

4am 19 6 524

4pm 57 6 421

5 4 9 1082

6 5 8 969

7 4 5 860

8 4 5 747

9am 15 5 617

9pm 62 6 448

10 4 4 1078

This is supposed to be a 80,000 grain softener but it seems that after about 600 gallons of 60 gr/gallon water it's spent. I would be grateful for your thoughts. Thank you.

It looks like the formatting didn't work, so I'm going to repost a new topic and put commas between the numbers. Sorry for the inconvenience.

How did you determine 18 minutes brine fill?

What do you have capacity set at?

You really need to know what your BLFC is - perhaps you could contact the vendor. There is no other way to know what time to set for brine fill.

Hi Alice

I will find out what the BLFC is and get back to you with the info. Thank you for your reply. I know that my softener capacity is programmed at 80,000. Clearly it isn't handling 80,000 grains. I'll be back in touch as soon as I find out the BLFC.

There is problem number one. Your softener will NEVER actually remove 80K grains. When your resin arrives new it is in a nearly perfect state. In order to maintain that level of capacity, it would have to be regenerated with obscene amounts of salt, on the order of 24-30 lb/cu ft of resin. That would be both impractical and wasteful, not to mention hard on your back. Softeners are programmed to maximize salt and water efficiency. The "sweet" spot generally falls at 6 lb salt/cu ft of resin. However, with iron in the water, you need to use at least 8.

As we reduce the salt dosage, softener capacity decreases as well. Quality resin manufacturers provide graphs of resin capacity vs salt dosage. Resin capacity is further reduced based on water TDS. A good ballpark number when we don't know the specific resin is: 55K for your 2.5 cu ft softener with your water conditions.

Additionally, when you have iron-laden waters, time is not your friend. The resin will remove iron in its ferrous form, but it will immediately start reverting to its ferric form, fouling the resin inside and out. The longer you go between regens, the faster your softener will foul, so iron fouling is a possibility here as well.

Long story short: change the softener programmed capacity to 55K and then we can make further adjustments once you know the BLFC size.

No need to test both hot and cold water - all that does is determine part of the temperature curve for your test. Just test room temperature water.

How was your iron analysis done? Was this number from a lab?

Hi AIW,

Thanks. I think your logic makes sense to drop the capacity to 55K.

I was testing the hot mostly out of curiosity to see if the water heater was holding hard water but it seems not to be the case.

The iron testing was done by Endyne labs in Sept 2012 and showed 1.1 mg/L in the well water. Mn was 0.15 mg/L.

In November 2014, Ohio Pure Water tested again and came up with the 0.5 ppm number.

When the well was drilled in 2007, the Fe was .8mg/L and the Mn was .45mg/L, done by Northeast Environmental Labs.

I'll let you know when I hear back from Ohio Pure about the BLFC.

For future reference, threads with new posts DO automatically move up to the top. Don't post a duplicate - it's tiresome and unnecessarily difficult when the relevant information is scattered all over.

If we believe your lab numbers you provided on the other thread over OPW and your testing (and of course we should) then you also need to set your hardness to 75 and, what do you know, the softener is doing exactly what is can - somewhere between 500 and 600 gallons softened. Changing the hardness to reflect the lab numbers will allow the softener to regen when it actually should and control itself properly.

Several months of poor operations with iron and manganese in your water are a problem, however, and your resin is likely fouled. I can provide a procedure for cleaning if you wish.

Hi,

Sorry about the double post. I did check and the thread had stayed buried. Maybe it just takes some time. My fault on that one.

Let's skip this thread and let it die a slow and painful death. I responded to the thread above with the info on the BLFC. Thank you for your help and I apologize for the doubles.

I would appreciate a resin cleaning procedure!