Anyone that has been shopping around for a media based water treatment device has probably asked themselves “How long will this media last and what’s involved with changing it”?

As far as the effective lifetime of softener resin or filter media goes, not even the manufacturer can predict for sure for some very good reasons. First, nobody has any idea how much water is going to flow through a given amount of media day after day. Also, elements in the water can drastically affect the life of the media. If a water softener were treating water with a hardness rating of 10gpg (grains per gallon) with little or no iron present, it would certainly last longer than the same softener treating 10gpg of hardness on a municipal water supply which contains 2ppm (parts per million) of chlorine. The chlorine will shorten the life of the softener resin to a degree. We have discovered softener resin dating back 25 years that was still effectively removing hardness.

The absolute most scientific and accurate way to determine when your water treatment appliance needs a new media bed is to test the water quality every so often. For example, if you are using a softener to remove hardness, the softener is set to regenerate correctly and is not out of salt (or potassium chloride), then your water should contain zero hardness. If you place a hardness test strip under your faucet and it shows 5 grains of hardness and the above mentioned conditions are met, your media bed needs to be changed. The only exception to this rule would be a softener installed with a hardness bleed-through device. Some people prefer a little bit of hardness in their water as opposed to none at all. In this case, disabling the bleed-through device and testing the water would give you more accurate results.

The same method applies for a carbon filter being used to treat chlorine. Your chlorine test strip should indicate zero chlorine so long as your carbon media bed is performing properly. If you note chlorine leaking through, it is time to either step up your filter’s backwash schedule or replace the media bed.

The concept of replacing media is not all that difficult to grasp. The old media needs to be removed from the filter or softener tank, disposed of properly and replace with new media. Replacing softener media is almost that simple. The tank resin tank must be removed from the plumbing and softener system. In most cases, this involves shutting off the feed water supply, removing the water pipes from the system and unscrewing the control valve from the top of the tank. The tank will be full of water so it will be quite heavy. Take care when moving this tank to a suitable location for resin removal. Once the tank is somewhere that the resin media can be poured out of the tank for drying and disposal, pour the resin (and water) out of the tank.

When the resin beads are surrounded with water, they pour quite easily, but once the water has drained off, the resin bed will lose it’s fluid characteristics and stop flowing. At that point it is helpful to have a garden hose handy to spray water into the resin media and pour again. Repeat this until as much resin comes out as possible. The distributor tube (a pipe running up and down the center of the media tank) will come out during this process as well. The distributor tube is not fastened in but merely sits in a depression inside the bottom of the tank. You will want to remove this tube while hosing out the interior of the media tank. Replace the tube when you are done, plug the top end of it so that the replacement media does not get inside of it and finally, add your replacement resin.

After refilling the tank remove the plug (or piece of tape) from the end of the distributor tube before screwing the control valve back on. Re-connect your plumbing and slowly begin pressuring your softener back up with water. Once all air pockets are out of the softener system and it is full of water with equalize pressure, it is a good idea to place your softener into regeneration mode. This will ensure that any dust or debris is flush out of the media bed and down the drain.

A very large softener or automatic backwashing filter requires another consideration. Because softener resin beads are quite smooth, most softeners do not make use of a gravel bed for the bottom of the media tank. This gravel bed is important for filter media because of the coarse surface of typical filter media granules. Without the gravel bed, your filter media will not backwash correctly. So when you pour out the filter media from the tank, the gravel bed will come along for the ride. You will also need to replace that first before adding the replacement filter media.

Why not put a metered (on-demand) control valve on an auto-backwashing filter system? That way the filter system would only backwash when a certain amount of water has passed through it and not on a regular schedule.

It sounds good at first, but metered control valves are designed for and used on water softener media (ion exchange resin). Ion exchange softener resin is made up of some very small beads that have slippery surfaces which allows water to easily flow through the media bed. Flow rates on even small softeners often exceed 10 gallons-per-minute, where flow rates for auto-backwashing filter systems exist around 5 to 6 gallons-per-minute. This is because filter media (carbon, greensand, filter Ag, birm, etc.) is made up of small coarse particles which are not smooth at all, which restricts the water’s flow due to friction. These coarse particles that make up the media must be coarse to trap contaminants such as iron or sediment particles.

With that in mind, picture water flowing through one of these filter media tanks. It’s going to meet much more resistance from the filter media than it would from softener media. As is true with most things in nature, water is going to take the path of least resistance. Once several hundred gallons of water have passed through this filter tank, it’s going to start carving channels in the media just like a stream or river will cut through the earth’s surface. These channels will provide much less surface area for the water to come in contact with. As a matter of fact, much of the water will flow in the center of these channels and not come in contact with the filter media at all.

Also, most filter media is designed to trap microscopic particles such as oxidized iron. A backwash is required to release these trapped particles from the media and rinse them down the drain. If the filter media is allowed to completely load up with these particles, it will be ineffective. There is also bacteria that thrive on these iron particles and if they are not rinsed out, they can grow inside the media tank. For any of these reasons, your auto-backwashing filter system needs to be “stirred up” on a regular basis.

One story comes to mind. A customer on the West Coast had a local water treatment dealer set up a Fleck 9000 twin tank system for her with activated carbon in the tanks. Now the Fleck 9000 control valve has only one configuration, and that is metered. It is designed for water softener resin and nothing else. This customer called me and wanted my help in troubleshooting her carbon filter problem. It seems that after less than 3 years, the jury-rigged 9000 system was not allowing water to flow through it anymore. And because water would not flow through, it would not backwash either. What happened was that her carbon filter media clogged up with whatever-it-was-filtering-out of the water, and “cemented” up. It was useless and ruined.

The extra precaution of backwashing your filter media is well worth it in the long run. Metered control valves are designed for softeners and should not be used with filter media.

This topic has been addressed on the web site and some of our older blogs but not here. Because this one is search-able, I thought it would be a good idea to address the subject of water pipe connections to our water treatment equipment.

There is a frequent misconception that if your water pipes are made of metal, you must attach them to metal fittings. This is not true. While I am certainly not a plumber, I can tell you that connecting a copper pipe to a Noryl yoke is possible and performed all of the time on a regular basis around here. First, some definitions:

Noryl: This is the material that 90% of our water treatment equipment control valves are made out of. Noryl is a modified polyphenylene oxide developed by GE in 1966. It is a wonderful material that not only prevents mineral buildup from water on its surfaces, it also helps to prevent lead from existing in your water (because there’s not a trace of lead in it).

Yoke: No, not the yummy part of an egg in this case, it’s what Fleck terms the interface between their Noryl control valves and pipe threads. Here are 3/4 and 1-inch Noryl yokes:

Bypass Valve: Here is a stainless steel bypass valve for Fleck controls:

A Noryl bypass valve for Fleck controls:

And a Noryl bypass valve for Autotrol controls:

As you can see, the Fleck stainless steel bypass valve uses one lever to switch modes from bypass to service. In bypass mode, the water does not enter the softener or filter which effectively removes the water treatment device from your plumbing loop. The Fleck stainless steel bypass valve does not use a yoke. It has female pipe threads for connecting to your pipes and slips right on to the Fleck control valve with o-ring seals and clips to hold it in place.

The Fleck Noryl bypass valve requires a yoke. This yoke has male pipe threads and is the connection between your pipes and the Fleck control valve. It fastens to the bypass valve with o-rings and clips in the same manner as the stainless steel bypass valve fastens to the controller. The bypass valve then fastens to the controller exactly the same way the stainless steel bypass valve does.

Then there is the Autotrol bypass valve. It will not fit the Fleck controllers and the Fleck bypass valves will not work with the Autotrol controllers. The Autotrol bypass valve uses tube connectors to attach to your water pipes. These tube connectors can be either copper or CPVC, the choice is yours.

The most important thing to note here is that no matter which material you choose for your bypass valve or even which connectors or yokes you use, you cannot solder directly to the bypass valve or tube connectors. Doing so will melt the rubber seals and plastic parts. Yes, that’s right; the stainless steel bypass valve has internal rubber seals and plastic parts. It is not immune to high heat. If you were to use a 3/4-inch male threaded by copper sweat fitting, screw it into the stainless steel bypass valve and try to sweat solder copper pipe into it, you will most likely damage it.

The main reason for this article is to demonstrate that you do not need to purchase a stainless steel bypass valve just because you have copper water pipes. And you do not need to choose the Fleck softener over the Autotrol softener just because the Autotrol does not have a stainless steel bypass valve. You can attach a 1-inch CPVC tube adapter to 3/4-inch copper pipes. You will need to purchase a CPVC glue (cement) to 3/4-inch pipe thread fitting. And you can attach a 3/4-inch Noryl yoke and bypass to 3/4-inch copper sweat pipe, you simply need to get a threaded to sweat fitting, which you will need to do anyway with the Fleck systems. Water Value strives to supply absolutely everything you will need to attach your water treatment equipment to your plumbing, but because everyone’s water pipes are different and we are not a plumbing parts supplier, you will need to visit a plumbing supply store before connecting your system.
The nice thing about the Autotrol systems is that you can directly cement the CPVC fittings to CPVC pipe without any type of threaded adapter. You can also directly attach the copper sweat fittings to copper pipe, but you will need to isolate the threaded Noryl fittings from the tube connectors before soldering or they will melt.

The Fleck model 7000 is another exception. It uses tube connectors but again, these are threaded. You will need some type of threaded female fitting which will attach to your water pipes be they PVC or copper. The model 7000 does have brass sweat fittings available as an option, but you would need to remove the rubber o-rings from them before sweat soldering them to your pipes. The brass adapters for the 7000 are expensive, so why not just use the standard threaded Noryl adapters and pick up a couple of inexpensive fittings at the hardware store?