AG Events » Advice on my situation of sizing water softener

Hi all,

I’ve done a lot of research and read through many threads here and got a general idea of which size softener to get, however I’m still unsure of which size to buy for my situation, I have received different recommendations from multiple sellers/plumbers. I would greatly appreciate your advise and expertise.

I am going between Fleck 5600 10% resin 48,000 or 64,000 grain. There are currently 4 people in our home (2 toddlers), however I am planning for the future and their growth and possibly another child.

At the moment we use minimal water, only ~35 gallons each per day, hardness is ~15 gpg per city (just ordered test kit to make sure). I am assuming as they get a little older in let’s say 5 years they will be using average 60 gallons. So now we would use 2100 grains a day, but looking forward we might use 3600 a day, we want to regenerate ~14 days or longer per recommendation.

I have read with a larger softener (64k) I can put less salt in it to soften 30000 grain every 14 days for now, and in the future use more salt to increase water usage, however the regeneration time now would be more likely a month, we would have to manually override every 14 days. With the 48k it would still be perfect size for us but wouldn’t we be using more salt and potentially too small when the kids get older?

You should get the 2 cubic ft "64000" for 16 grains and 5 people. If you used half of the calculated 300 gallons per day, it would still be a good fit. 1.5 cubic ft would not be too bad, but the numbers predict that you would regenerate about every 6 days. Yes you might use less water, but your hardness may be more than 16. Yes, the city may report an average of 15, but the settings you use should be for near the maximum hardness. You don't want to be reprogramming through the year as the mix between surface water and well water changes.

Thanks for your quick input Reach, so it would make sense to go with 2.0 cf only if I’m using the correct (less) amount of salt to get the correct grains softener per water I’m using correct?

For example if I get the 2 cf softener but fill it up with salt to the top, and if I ran override regeneration every 14 days I would be wasting that much more of softener water correct? And overtime this would be bad on the resin if I regenerate more often than the 2 cf can stand?

You put salt in the brine tank, and add more when that runs low. The softener, based on the controller settings, does the metering. So every few months you add more salt. Some people go a year. Initially, I kept less salt in the brine tank, because I wanted to check things. Now I fill it higher. Salt comes in 40, 44, or 50 pound bags for home use usually. You can add multiple bags, or you could routinely pick up one bag every time you go to the warehouse store. Stop buying when you have too many bags piled up.

Some opt for a backwashing carbon filter before the softener. It can remove chlorine and organic chemicals. I don't know what I would do in that regard. What you could do is to leave space.

No. You set up the softner to soften the number of grains it can do with 6 to 8 pounds of salt per cubic ft. It calculates the number of gallons that corresponds to and subtracts the reserve. There is a gallon countdown. If the countdown hits zero by 2am, it regenerates. (remember that when it hit zero, you still had the reserve) That could be 14 days. Or 23 days or 9 days. No need to worry. Its automatic. For your design, you try to keep the predicted number of days between 7 and 28. No big penalty for being outside of the forecast range at times.

At the moment we use roughly 2100 grains per day. So using 6-10 pounds of salt to get 30000 grains every 14 days regeneration sounds about right? Then the softener would automatically calculate how many gallons to use, and I would fill my brine tank almost full with salt.

Should I increase the regeneration time to produce more softened grains? How would you guys recommend going about regeneration times? Thanks