How *repairable* is a conventional ion exchange softener?
Also what is a realistic life for the resin (I see the manufacturer mentions 10-15 years) mine has now done 10 years.
The story, minor flood on the utility room floor. Symptoms, cabinet full of water and no salt. Leak from overflow seal.
The question, has a breakdown; valve seal etc. caused the overfill thus flushing out the salt or has a lack of salt prevented regeneration causing the overfill?
There is a 3 week lead time on a service engineer visit so I have ample time to follow up suggestions:-
New replacement quoted around £850 so not my preferred option.
Bouquets/gratitude will be expressed on a *no win no fee* basis:-)
Defective control valve. Brine refill valve letting by? The commonest ones are the Autotrol series, you can find maintenance guides on the web. You can get a seal replacement kit, or the valve can be replaced. I'm not familiar with most other makes; I'm not very familiar with those. Most people don't know a lot about them, so they have to put their trust in "professionals" who will typically grab every opportunity to misadvise them & sell them something they don't need.
Indefinite. 30 years+. If it still softens the appropriate number of gallons after regenerating, there's nothing wrong with it. Get a test kit and fit a water meter. It can get contaminated with iron, which has greater affinity for the resin than sodium, or you can get bacterial growth. Both these can be fixed with the appropriate chemical treatment. They'll try to sell you new resin or a new softener. The resin is cheap, but only if bought by the pallet-load. I had the resin replaced on a newish (3ish year old) commercial softener, under the manufacturer's advice. It made no difference to the problem. It was an design fault, which I eventually found (by luck) & fixed. All such softeners were the same. The service technician wanted to pick my brains when they found their softener had been fixed. So much for professional installation and maintenance.
Overfill probably. The salt has gone down the overflow. Grit under the valve seat or a new seal needed.
Customer service UK style.
=A3850? Duplex vessels? Metered regen? Have they offered to take it away for you? They're good at that.
It depends upon the type of control head fitted but in order to pull the brine into the resin container a low pressure must be created in the resin container. This is usually achieved by using a venturi.
Water at mains pressure flows through a small orifice creating the required pressure drop in the resin container. If the orifice gets blocked (a grain of sand will suffice) the regeneration brine isn't pulled to the resin. This produces two symptoms. Firstly the resin isn't being regenerated fully (or at all) so you will notice a fall off in performance. Secondly brine isn't being withdrawn but later in the cycle "replacement" water is being added so the salt container overflows. Usually the salt container will have only about 3in of water in it - if the low pressure generator isn't working that level will now have risen to the overflow hole and every time it regenerate water will overflow.
If you think the performance has got a bit iffy recently and the water level in the salt tank has risen to more than it used to and is overflowing brine its a pretty fair guess its a blocked venturi nozzle.
If you can force a regeneration you can sometimes hear this. The first part of the regeneration is usually a short backwash - this is quite noisy. The second part is the brine regeneration which takes much longer - 15 to 45 minutes. During this time the water level in the brine tank falls and you should hear a slight sound of a water jet inside the head and possible a trickle of water going into the salt drain. If the machine sits silently for the whole of this lengthy second phase time the nozzle is blocked.
You can download diagrams of various valves from places like
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SIATA V119/120 is a commonly used head)
Cleaning the nozzle is usually fairly straightforward. As an example if you look at the SIATA V119/120 manual and the exploded diagram on page 13 the venturi (called the injector) is contained within part no
4214-E1. To remove it take off the three screws (118) holding the motor unit 4311-D1) in place. Pull the piston (4213-1)outwards and the injector will come with it. The brass screw at the far end can be removed and the injector blown through, don't poke things into it. Take great care not to score either piston and use silicon grease when re-assembling.
Its usually worth emptying the brine tank of salt and cleaning it out while you have the thing out, quite a bit of debris can collect in it.
mine did this, it seemed that it couldn't quite turn the cam enough to finish letting the flap valve close, I pared a tiny bit off the cam and that cured it!!
there are other possibilities, but you don't say the make etc.
My water softener has an autrol valve. the same unit has been sold by wicks B&Q and homebase. The rubber flap valves harden with age and need to be replaced after a few years. Its an easy job to change them. When they go hard they don't close properly and instead of just a few inches of water in the bottom of the brine tank it fills up and overflows. They can also shrink slightly and then the water leaks to the outside of the valve and then runs into the tank or on the floor. The problem is worse if your water pressure goes up at night. And also worse in the winter as the cold water makes the valves less flexible.
This is a common one. There are two possible reasons. One is protecting a dealer base, the other is that the parts are very cheap and they don't want to process small orders.
Try again and ask them who distributes their spares or who are their largest customers.
Don't approach it from the perspective of asking their permission to buy, but from the perspective of wanting to know who the sources of supply are so that you can place an order. In other words assume rather than ask. This can make a difference.
I was speaking to a lowly personage and only trying to establish my options and the likely cost. Having learned the lead time and call out cost (79ukp for 1/2 hour and 12ukp/15 minutes thereafter +VAT) it seemed wise to consult the group:-)
I didn't pursue the matter but I think a replacement unit would only be available through a dealer.
I'll report back when I know more. For some time the unit has been noisy, 50/100Hz buzz. I assumed this was from the synchronous clock motor as I didn't think a solenoid would be permanently energised.
At the moment I am expecting a visit from my agronomist (crops lady) who will determine my immediate *spraying weather* future, should be turning out cattle and have a foundation trench to finish by hand pending Readimix. Soft water is a low priority.
I'd replace it anyway. Time control systems are fundamentally wasteful of water and salt. I can recommend my current one, which is a twin tank metered design for 650.
They certainly can supply parts direct. I have an Aqua-Dial Prismertec softener, which is another Culligan brand. I have repaired it a couple of times now - same/similar fault each time. As others have noted the "rubber flap" valves can cause trouble - in my case it is the SPRINGS that seem to wear out. The first time the springs on the BYPASS valve snapped. Most recently the springs on the INLET and OUTLET valves have got very weak. I guess this is not surprising because of the way these valves are operated - the particular ones that seem to wear out are the ones that are held open most of the time, so the springs are always being "bent". On my Prismertec, the water paths inside the valve are designed so that normally, when a valve is closed, water pressure HELPS keep it closed. But when going from open to closed, some of them rely on a bit of spring assistance to nudge them into the required (closed) position. When this has happened, the water-pressure self-closing action immediately takes over.
The springs in my case are just like these (also used on some Autotrol valves):
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have just bought a "lifetime's supply" (of 20) from Culligan spares dept - £1.05 each. Hopefully these will last me for a few more repairs - note that these main valves have TWO strings fitted for a bit of extra spring assistance. You should be able to do a bit of digging around on the web for a diagram or installation or service manual of your valve - there don't seem to be that many basic types. The one on the Prismertec is I think known as the Technetic 1100, or at least the manual that I downloaded for that valve looks identical. Along the way the names Osmonics and Autotrol also cropped up - it's not clear how all these brand names fit together!
If you can find a valve manual, that will explain what valves are supposed to be open and closed during different stages of regeneration. It seems that especially the Americans provide all this valve data for builders of softeners of arbitrary size, so there is lots of technical info available. It ALMOST looks like you can (at least in America) buy the bits separately and "build your own" softener.
Anywa, armed with a manual, you can manually operate the valves (after removing the cam) and get a feel for whether any are sticking open or only loosly-sprung or whatever. In my case when the softener tried to suck up brine, it closes the inlet and outlet valves, but because these springs were weak, the water continued flowing INTO the brine tank rather than being sucked up by the venturi action. This led to an overflowing brine tank, use of LOTS of salt, and no soft water. Very similar to your symptoms. At this point in the cycle if I turned off the incoming mains water (i.e. released the pressure) then re-opened the mains inlet, the valves suddently flapped shut and it started sucking like a good-un. Replacing the springs made it work fine again.
A confession:-( Despite the excellent advice given here, I opted to wait for the service engineer. I hope this will not affect my newsgroup subscription status.
Actually quite pleasant as service visits go. The first surprise was a phone call from the engineer to check that he was expected and to give a rough idea of arrival time.
Fleck controls for the cognoscenti. Spread out in bits after a few minutes work. The brine valve was visibly sticky with limescale on the shaft. The synchronous motor was noisy and I was happy to agree a replacement.
A water pressure check found 100psi mid morning so likely to be more overnight. The unit has a max rating of 95! There was a recommendation to fit a pressure limiting valve which I shall probably ignore.
Re-assembled in 30 minutes and running a manual regen. He was not happy with my regen settings and argued that a power shower = one more person. Bet he has shares in a salt producer.
Parts 57, labour 77 so not much compared to a replacement. He said that a flow meter version exists but is more expensive. Next time!
Once again, thanks to all who contributed. Having carefully watched the strip down, I feel confident I could repeat the job if more slowly.
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