Foam Brush suddenly turned watery

[Earl Weiss]

, the KR Cherry Blossom foam brush soap is garbage. We had nothing but problems with it.

What problems?

 

[Randy]

What problems?

We get this bacterial growth in the chemical holding tanks that looked like snot and it would plug up everything, the only way to control the bacterial growth is to use swimming pool bleach pellets. We also had separation problems in the 5 gallon buckets, you could see the separation and we couldn't get it to go back into solution. We store our chemicals at 60 deg. so it’s not like they froze. We worked with KR for some time and they ended up replacing the Cherry Blossom with Fonic Wash, we’ve never had any problems with the Fonic wash that we had with the KR chemicals. The Fonic wash works great as a Foam brush soap, foams up like shaving cream.

 

[designflaw]

Hey Guys, I am still trying to troubleshoot this but not having much luck. If I try to use a lower trip, the foam brush turns into water. I did another hard water test and it came up a little higher. I tried to troubleshoot the water softener by running it but could not get it to turn on. Does anyone know what the make/model number is or how to turn this water softener on?

 

[Roz]

That is a solid idea. I am doing something similar. 60 on the flojet and 30 on air. I will start dialing down the tip size down 1 by 1 to see if I can get it lower. I was just frustrated that it is day # 3 and my foam brush looked bad.

We just (today) moved from using a winter blend exclusively to our summer mix. Took a little trial and error changing the tips to get the right shaving cream look as the winter mix had a larger tip (20:1) to prevent freezing. We started with yellow (90:1) and then made the tip one size larger (76:1) to get our look. Again, the container label numbers are probably set by people in lab coats (or their marketing dept) and not operators. I like Randy's suggestion about adding swimming pool pellets to keep the bacteria at bay. We sprinkle pool chlorine packets inside our IBA in the winter to keep algae from forming on the floor. Not an issue in the warmer months as the doors are open.

 

[Greg Pack]

That looks like an old fleck. It's a twin tank and I assume it's set up as a alternating tank setup. Start a manual regeneration which will take a couple hours. Then, start a manual regeneration tomorrow to regenerate the other tank. That will get both tanks conditioned. within a few seconds you should hear a rush of water as it starts the backwashing process. The level of salt should drop after each regeneration. You can measure from the top of the tank to the top of the salt level before and after regeneration to verify this. After both tanks are conditioned you can check and should have soft water, ideally zero grains. You might want to message buckeye hydro for some better assistance.

 

[designflaw]

That looks like an old fleck. It's a twin tank and I assume it's set up as a alternating tank setup. Start a manual regeneration which will take a couple hours. Then, start a manual regeneration tomorrow to regenerate the other tank. That will get both tanks conditioned. within a few seconds you should hear a rush of water as it starts the backwashing process. The level of salt should drop after each regeneration. You can measure from the top of the tank to the top of the salt level before and after regeneration to verify this. After both tanks are conditioned you can check and should have soft water, ideally zero grains. You might want to message buckeye hydro for some better assistance.

Thank you so much!

 

[cantbreak80]

Greg is correct. That is an old Fleck 9100 valve with their 3200 timer.

Your photo shows softening capacity of approximately 5,000 gallons per tank.
(Hopefully, you disconnected the meter cable before swinging the timer away from the base.)

To start a regeneration simply turn the dial clockwise…1 click!

The valve will slowly open and water will strongly flow to drain during the "Backwash" cycle. Typically, after about 10 minutes the flow to drain will slow to a trickle and brine water will begin drawing down.

With proper tank level, the brine tank should empty in about 15 minutes. Slow flow to drain should continue for about another 45 minutes for this “Slow Rinse” cycle.

After that 1 hour of “Brine Draw/Slow Rinse” the flow to drain will again increase for about 6 minutes of “Rapid Rinse” followed by the brine tank refill cycle.

Once the regen has been completed, that tank will be in “Standby” mode, awaiting exhaustion of the in-service tank. To have the freshly regenerated tank immediately go in-service, you must repeat the regen process. However, doing so will result in significantly reduced capacity on the second tank. This is due to the saturation time required for strong brine…typically 4-6 hours is required to produce fully saturated brine.

If your facility has a DHW storage tank, all that stored hard water must be consumed before you see 0 grain hot water. If you have a cold soft water outlet, test the water there to see if the softener is fully functional.

Once both tanks have been successfully regenerated, test for softness regularly to insure you are producing the desired 5,000 gallons of treated water. If the on-line softener cannot provide 0 grains for its entire 5,000 gallon capacity, you may need to re-bed the system. Ten years is the common life expectancy for 10% cross-linked resin in chlorine treated municipal water systems…even fewer years for 8% cross-linked resin.

 

[designflaw]

Greg is correct. That is an old Fleck 9100 valve with their 3200 timer.

Your photo shows softening capacity of approximately 5,000 gallons per tank.
(Hopefully, you disconnected the meter cable before swinging the timer away from the base.)

To start a regeneration simply turn the dial clockwise…1 click!

The valve will slowly open and water will strongly flow to drain during the "Backwash" cycle. Typically, after about 10 minutes the flow to drain will slow to a trickle and brine water will begin drawing down.

With proper tank level, the brine tank should empty in about 15 minutes. Slow flow to drain should continue for about another 45 minutes for this “Slow Rinse” cycle.

After that 1 hour of “Brine Draw/Slow Rinse” the flow to drain will again increase for about 6 minutes of “Rapid Rinse” followed by the brine tank refill cycle.

Once the regen has been completed, that tank will be in “Standby” mode, awaiting exhaustion of the in-service tank. To have the freshly regenerated tank immediately go in-service, you must repeat the regen process. However, doing so will result in significantly reduced capacity on the second tank. This is due to the saturation time required for strong brine…typically 4-6 hours is required to produce fully saturated brine.

If your facility has a DHW storage tank, all that stored hard water must be consumed before you see 0 grain hot water. If you have a cold soft water outlet, test the water there to see if the softener is fully functional.

Once both tanks have been successfully regenerated, test for softness regularly to insure you are producing the desired 5,000 gallons of treated water. If the on-line softener cannot provide 0 grains for its entire 5,000 gallon capacity, you may need to re-bed the system. Ten years is the common life expectancy for 10% cross-linked resin in chlorine treated municipal water systems…even fewer years for 8% cross-linked resin.

Thank you. The person who ran the wash was kind enough to stop by and show me how to run it. We manually triggered the water softener and while it was on tank # 1, the hardness was pretty high. When it switched to tank # 2, the hardness went away and we saw that the foam brush with a lower tip started to work real well again so I am as happy as I can be.

We think the issue is that we need to re-bed the system.

For ur comment about "Hopefully, you disconnected the meter cable before swinging the timer away from the base.", I did not do that. How to I make sure that I did not cause any damage?

 

[cantbreak80]

So, it's a mechanical cable connecting the controller to the meter. It can disengage from the timer and it a real Bit*h to reconnect. Or, the inner cable can get stretched or bent which will cause it to bind.

Before swinging the door open, disconnect it from the meter.

BTW...if the softener is as old as it looks, a new Pentair 9500 valve with the STX electronic timer just might save you a bunch of headaches, hair pulling, and hand wringing.
FWIW, I've re-bedded a few softeners only to have the valve(s) shoot craps soon after. Talk about frustrating and expensive!