Water Softeners and Air Filtration Systems - Please Recommend A Whole House Water Softener

I read some of the postings in this forum with great interest. Here is my situation:
Private well water with a great deal of Iron. Used the BigBoss Softener (Well Water) for 6 years and fed it 2 40lb bags of Iron Out crystals from Home Depot. The unit worked fine until the over flow valve started to constantly over flow :-) the vendor's help line wasn't much of a help. Ditched that unit last year and went for a water conditioner designed to remove Iron from well water or so I was told. Installed the conditioner unit along with its chem feed tank and pump. But still gave us the rusty stains in our sinks and cloths! very disappointing!! So now we want to go back to what worked for 6 years a water softener but what's available at the bigbox stores is GE softeners. Reading the postings in this forum the Fleck & Clack WS-1 softeners seem to be the winners. Can someone recommend a model from either vendor please?

The current water conditioner is a 1.5 cu ft unit that can produce up to 48000 grains. Excellent water pressure unlike the BigBoss which seemd to produce less pressure.

I've always used the Fleck 5600. I've seen the results of using softeners with electronics. Not a pretty site. I don't belive in mixing salt, water and electronics.

Before recommending anything, I would need to know your water conditions and other aspects such as number of people using water and your current chemical feed system. How is that system currently set up, piece by piece and what chemical are you using and how is it injected into the water.

Whbat do you consider 'very high iron'? How hard is your water? Do you have a front- or top-loading washer? What kind of well pum do you have? How big is your pressure tank? Etc., etc. etc.

Andy Christensen, CWS-II

Be aware that non computerized units will use more salt and more water to regenerate due to the fact that they regenerate based on the timer settings and not on how many gallons were used before regeneration so if your timer is set to regenerate every three days and you only use 200 gallons of water in those three days the manual unit will still regenerate although there is still a large quanity of your resin bed unused. Where as computerized sys. are more efficient. They regenerate based on the amount of water that passes through the unit( if all of your settings are correctly set i.e. hardness, iron level, backwash time, rinse time) In my opinion the Ecowater units are good units. The only thing that needs replacing generally are the valves disc and seal kit about every 7 to 10 years.

Be aware that non computerized units will use more salt and more water to regenerate due to the fact that they regenerate based on the timer settings and not on how many gallons were used before regeneration so if your timer is set to regenerate every three days and you only use 200 gallons of water in those three days the manual unit will still regenerate although there is still a large quanity of your resin bed unused. Where as computerized sys. are more efficient. They regenerate based on the amount of water that passes through the unit( if all of your settings are correctly set i.e. hardness, iron level, backwash time, rinse time) In my opinion the Ecowater units are good units. The only thing that needs replacing generally are the valves disc and seal kit about every 7 to 10 years.

I sell metered systems that are not computerized! I was also a service manager for an Ecowater dealership for over 8 years. The amount of service calls on Ecowater units vs Fleck unit is about 10 to 1.

I work on fleck valves the sxt valve for the iron breaker for instance has a wiring issue. fleck is generic anybody can buy one off the internet and put it in if their looking for a cheap unit. no offense towards you.

No offense taken. Yes Fleck is cheap, but they last. I don't sell any Fleck with electronics on them. I don't like computers on water softeners. When I worked as a service manager, I had an Ecowater 3000 R30 in my home. I replaced it with a Fleck 5600 metered demand system. I used 1 more bag of salt a year. Was worth the cost of 1 more bag not to have to clean the venturi or replace the seals.