Hard Water = Injector Problems?

[Red Baron]

I admit that after 11 years in this business I should be more up to speed on how hard/soft/RO water works or not, but up un til recently everything has worked great with just maintaining the salt and changing the filters once a month.

This new/old wash was neglected and last week the water tested at 100 TDS and 15 drops on the hardness test to turn pink to blue. This caused the injectors on my D&S 5000 to plug on the presoak. I had a waterguy change the membranes and refill the charcoal cylinder, which had been bypassed for who knows how long. When the waterguy left TDS was down to 15 and I assumed hardness was on its way down too.

Today the injectors on the presoak are plugged again just 4 days after having them all replaced. I tested the water hardness and it's now around 17 drops to make blue. Can hard water clog the injectors (or the Dema solenoids) in just 4 days?

Clues?

 

[rph9168]

Did you clean out or replace the lines? If the nozzles were that clogged your lines probably had a lot of build up. To be sure the problem doesn't return I would replace the lines rather than flush them out.

Did you test the water in the tank or at the nozzles? If you tested at the nozzles you may be getting a bad reading due to build up in the lines. Your water hardness should be less than 5 ppm. Something might be wrong with your system if it is back up to that level.

 

[MEP001]

Have you not checked on the softener? You mentioned changing the membranes and presoak nozzles, but that's not what provides the wash with soft water.

I'm not even aware of any injectors on a D&S 5000 - is this an older machine?

 

[jcollins]

Looks like the water guy fixed the R/O unit by getting the TDS down to 15ppm for spotfree water. But with the water still at 17 grains of hardness, someone needs to repair the softeners.

 

[Red Baron]

Have you not checked on the softener? You mentioned changing the membranes and presoak nozzles, but that's not what provides the wash with soft water.

I'm not even aware of any injectors on a D&S 5000 - is this an older machine?

It's a newer unit, less than years - the new ones have injectors rather than Flojets.

Softners, he was to go through everything, but evidently he didn't. I'm spending some time on the internet learning how soft and RO works - interesting. There are so many systems in a car wash, and it's not my fulltime job, so I've just tended to learn about each system as needed, when it fails. I've been lucky up until now on the soft/RO.

 

[MEP001]

Softeners are relatively simple - what model is it? If you take the cover off, take a pic and post it here I can probably tell you, and give you a few things to look at.

Softener guys are like plumbers - they charge a lot for work that others can't, won't, or don't know how to do. Sometimes you're better off replacing the softener head than letting someone repair it.