Water Sotener Restricts Flow

[MEP001]

As far as getting the heads off, it's a matter of muscling them around. Once you have the unions loose it will just take some rocking to move the softener far enough to unscrew the head. When I install softeners that big, I put two unions on the pipe so the whole connecting sections can be removed and the head unscrewed without ever moving the tank at all. You might be able to do the same by cutting the pipe and adding a union.

Getting the resin out is easy but a little time consuming. You can use a shop vac - just run a hose down the distribution tube and siphon the water out. I prefer to siphon the resin out with a hose. You can keep the tank full of water through the tube and siphon everything into a trash can, then dip the water out and scoop the resin into the trash. If you do it carefully you can get almost all the resin out and not disturb the gravel bed, then you can add new resin on top of it, but I prefer to clean it out and replace the gravel. There are several reasons to do it that way.

 

[Rudy]

Thanks MEP, you saved me a lot of trial and error.

Everyone was right. It took me 1 1/2 days to do 2-21"x62" tanks. FWIW....here are several of the things I learned. I hope it may save you some time....

Wood Brothers had the resin (8% Crosslink) at less than $50 per cuft. Locally, they wanted $125! They also have the gravel if you want it. My units required 125# of gravel and 7 cuft. of resin per unit.

I purchased a special water softener funnel for less than $15. While you can make your own out of a bucket or similar....this thing was worth it's weight in gold since it was heavy duty, fit perfectly, and was elliptical (instead of round) in shape. This became a factor, since the new resin does not really "pour". It had to be shaken in using a scoop....and this is a chore when you have to put 7 cuft. of material in a 4 inch hole with a 1 1/2 PVC pipe in the middle.

Speaking of the PVC pipe, I used new hubs and laterals (also provided by Wood Bros.). The old ones looked OK, however, the laterals have very fine slits in them for the water to enter. A lot of the slits were clogged with fine bits of old resin....and I didn't want to take a chance on installing $$$$$ worth of resin and still have flow problems. A new hub and lateral cost less than $40. The 1 1/2" PVC pipe came from Lowes.

I used an old ARO diaphragm pump to pump out the old water and resin. Per MEP's suggestion, I put a garden hose down the center distribution tube, and pumped out the water/resin mixture into 5 gallon buckets in a SS bay via a long poly hose in a SS bay. A helper would fill the bucket, let the mixture settle, pour off the water at the top, and then dump the bucket in the dumpster when full of resin. (My dumpster is 40% full of orange resin. I wonder if the trash man will have any thoughts about seeing this mess???)

When the unit was pumped down to the gravel, it could be removed with a hand truck to a SS bay where the unit was inverted and cleaned. It was very heavy, but doable.

MEP's idea of installing a union was a godsend. These units are so big and heavy that there would be NO WAY you could get the heads off without getting the connecting pipes out of the way.

The guy at Wood Bros. suggested that I have 2 replacement o-rings for my Fleck 2900 softener head just in case. The o-rings were for the head to distribution tube, and also the head to the fiberglass tank. I think they cost $5 total per unit. I always use o-ring silicone grease around the car wash, and it worked well here also.

I had my wife, with her small hands, assemble the hub and laterals. Although the instructions said to assemble the hub/laterals first, and then cement the PVC distribution tube....we chose to cement the PVC pipe first, and then assemble the laterals. The PVC pipe gave us "something" to have a hold of, and it worked better this way. We did this in the SS bay while it was on it's side in case something got dropped inside.

Don't forget to tape over the PVC pipe when refilling the gravel/resin. I used Gorilla tape...and it was great. The last thing I wanted was for the tape to fail with a funnel full of material ready to fall inside.

As someone here said, it's not hard, just time consuming. It took 4 hours to put the resin back into both of the tanks. Your mileage may vary.

This forum has saved me a lot of time and money. I hope this information helps you also.

 

[MEP001]

I purchased a special water softener funnel for less than $15. While you can make your own out of a bucket or similar....this thing was worth it's weight in gold since it was heavy duty, fit perfectly, and was elliptical (instead of round) in shape. This became a factor, since the new resin does not really "pour". It had to be shaken in using a scoop....and this is a chore when you have to put 7 cuft. of material in a 4 inch hole with a 1 1/2 PVC pipe in the middle.

I'm sorry I didn't remember to mention a trick to help here. I attach a vacuum cleaner to the center tube to pull the resin into the softener.

The guy at Wood Bros. suggested that I have 2 replacement o-rings for my Fleck 2900 softener head just in case. The o-rings were for the head to distribution tube, and also the head to the fiberglass tank. I think they cost $5 total per unit. I always use o-ring silicone grease around the car wash, and it worked well here also.

That was a good suggestion on their part. They don't often break or tear if they were lubricated when the softener was assembled, but the odd thing is that Fleck actually says not to. I can't imagine why you wouldn't - it's only caused problems for me when they were left dry. I've had the tube and strainer pull up out of the gravel bed while unscrewing the head because the o-ring was stuck to it - one guy had the halves of the strainer unscrew apart and didn't realize it, and when he put the head back on it filled all his equipment with gravel and resin. I accidentally cut a 1/2" long piece out of an o-ring while installing a softener for the first time, and I slathered it with silicone grease, stuck the cut piece in and put it together, and it didn't leak a bit for a week until the replacement I ordered came in. I've used it on every softener rubber part ever since.