Summary
Learn how to assemble, disassemble, and reassemble the best water softener valve in the market being the CLACK WS1 Water Softener Valve with this blog today. These learnings can be applied with of course your current water softeners, iron filters, tannin filters, and more.
Tips and Tricks for Clack WS1 Water Softener Valve Disassembly
Do you want to learn how to disassemble, rebuild and troubleshoot the great Clack WS1 water treatment valve? Below in this blog is the transcript of my YouTube Live Stream here where I take you step by step through the whole process.
Clack WS1 Rebuild Transcription
Gary the Water Guy says…
I've often said that the Clack WS1 water softener valve is the best water treatment valve in the business, and I've done lots of videos on troubleshooting these valves and a lot of other great information. But I thought today I'd do a live stream and I'd actually disassemble it on YouTube Live right now for you today.
Where is the Clack WS1 Valve Used?
I guess one of the first questions is where is this Clack WS1 valve used?
Well, obviously it's used on water softeners, but a whole lot more. It's also used on iron filters. It's used on tannin filters. It's used on automatic washing filters. It's used on neutralizing filters. It's used on a whole bunch of different other water treatment products, and the valve is the same.
There's just some subtle differences between them. So this is a five button valve, and the five button valve can be arranged in three and two as this one is here, or it can also be arranged. The five buttons straight across this is actually a Clack WS1 CC valve.
It's got some more programming and some more information that can be put in, and this is the classic Clack WS1 valve with the five buttons across. This is the original one that came out in the year 2000, and since then there have been more different models that I've come across.
You may also see one with three buttons like this. So the difference between a three button and a five button is the three button is a time clock valve. So that's typically used on things like back washing, carbon filters, back watching sediment filters, things like that where it's not a metered filter.
Ensure the Unit is On Bypass
I guess before you do any work on this kind of a valve or any kind of water treatment valve, you always have to start at the same place, and that is, you have to put the unit on bypass. So this has a bypass valve at the back built in the back here. And what you do is these two red shutoffs here are shaped like an arrow.
So what you do is you point the two arrows towards the toward each other towards the middle. By doing that, now you've bypassed the unit. So once you've bypassed the unit, then you need to release the pressure inside the valve.
And to do that, you start a regeneration cycle so you push the region button and you hold it down for five seconds. And after five seconds or so, you'll hear that, and that is the valve starting up the cycle.
What it's doing now, it's releasing all the pressure inside the valve and it's releasing it out of the drain. So you hear some water running to drain and this is the drain line here. You hear some water running to drain and then they hear it slowly die off.
Removing the Faceplate
And once that's happened, the pressure has been released. All right. So then the next step is that you would remove the faceplate. So we click the two taps on either side and the faceplate comes right off. One of the neat things about the clock valve, historically, they always had the manual or a basic manual inside here, inside here. But now if you look at what's inside here, you see a QR code. See that. I hope you can see that in the focus. Yeah, that's showed up showing up. OK. So if you have a QR reader on your cell phone like I do, and if you open that QR reader and help, you can see that. You press OK and it takes you right into the section of the Clack WS1 website that shows you the manual for the different models, so you can see there's four different models, there is a three button, a five button straight across and then two other five button valves.
So you just click on the one that you have. Mark Clark, don't make me a liar. All right, so I clicked on there, and there's a basic manual that comes up and what I mean by a basic manual.
It shows you things like how to bypass it, how to set the time, et cetera. So again, that's a great little manual that comes in there. If you're looking for a more in-depth manual, you can always send us an email and we can email you one, depending on which valve you have.
Turning the Unit and Disconnecting Power
Once you've got the face plate off. So now the next step is turn it like this so you can see a little bit better. And so this is right now it's counting down. So what we can do is we need to disconnect the power.
As you see, there's electrical connections along the bottom here. And so depending on what the valve is doing, if it's a metered valve, how do you know if it's a metered valve? If you look at the side here, you see this gray wire here that's going to the meter over here.
That's the gray wire here. Before I disconnect it, why don't I show you a little bit about the meter? To get to the meter, you'd unscrew this. Now is this valve was connected, even though you release the pressure when you open up the meter. There's going to be some water comes out so you can use a screwdriver to do this or you can use, you know, I used the loonie. We're up here in Canada, so I've used the loonie for this before.
And then you can pull out the meter so the turbine that controls it. This is the turbine that spins when water is flowing through it. And so one way that you can check the turbine is if you take this.
I'm just going to take it to the end of its cycle, so it's back in service. Once it starts counting down the minutes within each cycle, if you press the region button again, then it will take you to the to the next cycle or to the end in this case, because this was the second cycle.
This is actually programmed as an arrow for media, iron or sulfur Photoshop, something like that. All right. OK, so it's back to the home screen. You know where it's on its home screen, when it has the current time. If I blow on this to simulate water flowing through, can you see that the word filtering is flashing in the top left corner there? I'll do it again. See that. So that's how it tests the meter. So it'll flash a few seconds longer even after the meter stops or the turbine stops.
So that's how you can test the meter. Again, we'll put that back in there. So typically, the meter is only included in water softeners ten and filters sometimes air over a media ion filters have them, too.
There's three electrical connections. So on this one, this is for the motor. This is for the power. And this one here is the one for the meter, the gray wire that we were just looking at.
How to Remove the Motor
All right. So I'm just going to show you very quickly how to remove the motor. It's got to be the so many things about this valve are so easy to service, and replacing the motors is a biggie. So to replace the motor, all you do is this connected electric electrically.
Then it has the snap ring along the bottom here, and then all you do is just push it in and the motor slides right out. That's amazing how easy that is to change. Now, having said all that, in eight years of doing service work on water treatment equipment, including clock valves, how many motors have I changed in the field? None. They're incredibly reliable. So, but anyway, all right, so click that back in there. Good. OK. So to disconnect the power, you would connect this one, it's this one here. So again, if your valve is a back washing valve or one that doesn't have a meter, you won't have this electrical connection here, but I'm going to disconnect that now. And so if you're just removing the circuit board, then you would disconnect the motor at this point, too. So removing the circuit board is super easy. So I'm going to slide this a little bit forward so you can see a little bit better.
So you see there's one tab in the middle here at the top. So all you would do is you would lift up that tab and the circuit board comes right out. So again, you lift that up, pull the circuit board forward and you can replace it.
How to Remove the Circuit Board
And if anyone's ever done any work on any of the other brands of water softening valves and try to remove a circuit board, it's a big process. And this one is so simple to remove and so simple to replace.
So and 11 tip for water treatment equipment of any sort that's electrically. Use the search suppressor. A search suppressor will make these boards last a lot longer. And that's about the only reason why these boards fail is if you've had a brownout or something like that, that's affect the power.
So to put the circuit board back in, you just line up the two tabs at the bottom and then click it in at the top. All right. So we want to remove this whole unit. We want to disassemble it.
That's what I promised you here. OK, so these wires that are on the side here? Turn this here so you can see a little bit better. So all you do is unclipped those. You can set them up here out of the way.
And then there's two tabs at the top at the very top. See these two tabs up here. So you do just lift those two tabs and the whole cradle comes out in one piece like that whole thing comes up.
Getting into the Piston and Seal Pack
So then all you do is you can just set that aside. I'll put it over here. All right. So now to get into the piston and the seal pack is inside here. So why would you have to get into the piston and seal pack?
Well, if this is an iron filter or a water softener on well water that has iron, you're going to have some build up inside on that on that seal pack inside there. It could be a water softener, too.
What happens is the seals. So this is the seal pack here that comes in a unit like this hold a lot closer so you can see a little bit better. There you go. And it comes a totally assembled in a unit like this.
But what can happen over the over the years or if they're really rough water coming in here like water that has lots of iron or lots of grit in it? As the piston goes back and forth, it can foul these O-rings inside here.
And then what'll happen is occasionally I'll get a call that people say, well, when the water softener or the iron filter, whatever it is, it's in service. I can hear water still trickling down to the drain. And what that's telling you is that this and or the piston has been compromised, so this has to be replaced.
Using the Clack WS1 Disassembly Wrench
So that's what this is. The next stage of what we're going to hear right now is to remove this section here. All right. So Clack makes this great tool. If you're looking where to get one? We have them on our website here.
So you just click this in here. It just fits right in there. We'll get up close and you can use that to to start to unscrew the drive assembly they call us. All right. So once I've got it loosened up.
With just unscrew this. OK, so again, if this is in use, there will be some water coming down here again because you bypassed that it's not going to be under pressure, but there will be water that comes out.
So make sure you've got something to catch that water. So we pull it out here and here. All right. So this is what comes out of there. And so what you're looking at here, just making sure that you can see it, yep, you can.
This is the brine piston. So. If what you're working on is a water softener or an air over media, iron or sulfur filter, you'll have the piston and the brine piston. If it's a back washable filter, it's just going to have the piston.
If it's a water softener, it's going to have the piston and the brine piston. They're both going to be there. So this unit here is kind of a Frankenstein. This is the one that I use when I do consumer shows, college shows, that kind of thing.
You can see this is used. This was used as an iron filter at one time. And so but these things are super easy to replace and super easy to disassemble. So. You can see it's tapped in there. All you do is just slide that out like that. It's the Brian Piston and this one here. Now you may have to extend it and to extend it, you just turn. So, so it comes out.
So one of the great things about this is it's keyed, so it will only fit one way. You can't put this in the wrong way. All right. So then the next thing is to remove the the seal pack.
What the Seal Pack looks like
This is what the SEAL Pack looks like. So again, this was an iron filter, so you can see it's quite dirty with iron. These can become super dirty, like, I mean, super dirty. Like, it looks like melted fudge cycle in here.
It's just totally covered with iron in that. And if you run into that, it's a good idea to clean it. And as long as it's not leaking, you can actually clean it and reassemble it. How do you clean it?
Well, the obvious way is you'd run it under the faucet and get rid of most of the iron that's clogged on here. But what else you could do is you can use a product like this. This is rust out or, yeah, rust out, so you can use it again.
That's available on our e-commerce website if you're looking for that. And so what you do is you just take a bucket of water. You put some of that powder in, dissolve it in the water and then you take these parts and you put them in that bucket.
You leave it overnight. You come back in the morning. The water will be perfectly clear and this will look like brand new. And then it's time to reassemble it. So you can also clean out inside here. And again, you can use that liquid after you've dissolved it in water.
That liquid rust out and you can wash out the inside of the valve here with that to clean it up. All right. So once you've cleaned all that up and you've got the spacer stack all cleaned up, then you can just reassemble this.
So I should mention, too, is that sometimes this spacer stack is stuck in there and it's stuck in there that you cannot get it out. You try prying it out. You try putting your fingers in there and pull it out.
You try doing all kinds of things if you cannot get that thing out of there. Clack actually makes a tool to get that out. And this is it here. Hold it a little closer here so you can see, but it is actually made so that when you apply some pressure, it spreads like this to hook into the inside so that you can pull it out. Now, how many times have you used one of these in the field? Never. I have always gotten a vote without any problem. But but like I say, we do have one, and if we ever run into a situation, we're covered. We have the spacer stack and pistons here.
Reassembling the Drive
Spacer stack goes back in and then you need to reassemble the drive. OK. So again. The piston is keyed now, if you're putting if you're cleaning up the old piston and you're reusing the piston. What you should do is on these outside surfaces here, you should use some very fine sandpaper and just send them. And that just cleans it up a little bit, so slides in and out more easily, especially if, like I say, if you've got a lot of iron or if you've got a lot of sand sediments in your water, that kind of thing, that's a good thing to do.
And same with this little brine piston. Now, if your space or stack is leaking or the seals are gone in the space or stack or it's just too far gone, then I recommend replacing the spacer stack. Well, you need two anyway, but also replacing the piston and the brightest.
They're not all that expensive. And that way, you've got a whole new assembly and that makes a lot of sense. So I have seen these too, where the people are in, well, water and they've had a problem with the well and they've got sand in their well and the sand has been sucked up and it totally fills. All this totally fills, totally fills inside here. And I've actually seen it actually snap this. So if you have that situation, obviously you need to spin down filter or something like that before the system to make sure you get rid of that sand or correct the problem in the well, obviously.
And OK, so then all you need to do is reassemble this. So if you if you look closely here and again, I don't know if you can see it or not right up here. OK. So what it says up there is no lubricant on clear seals.
Use Clear Silicone Grease on Clear Seals
What they mean by clear seals is that these clear seals that are here, these are the clear seals. What they don't mean is the old ring that's around here, the black hole ring. So I usually use some plumbers clear silicone grease on those or rings and then put that back in.
So, all right, so we're going, we feed that in like that. And start tightening that up. But take it hand tight as far as I can, which looks like I'm just about there. And then we use our clock tool to close that up.
So we've got that together. So if this part is protruding too far, it's going to make it difficult to get the assembly back together.
So what I normally do is I just turn this will turn it in this direction so that this goes inside like that and makes it a little easier to reassemble. OK, great. So we've got that part and we put this together.
Be Careful of Wires Near Strain Relief Notches
There's two little hooks here and the feet just hook into their. But actually, before we do that, one thing you have to be careful of is these wires up here. So there's a little strain relief notches up here where the wire has to go and you have to make sure like I didn't, you have to make sure that these wires are pushed all the way in into those strain relief come across a number of valves where someone did not do that. And it actually caused problems because this wouldn't click shut. Both tabs at the top here need to click all the way down.
We'll turn it this way. So then we thread. Through the sides here, and if you've estimated the length correctly, then these will plug in here perfectly. But Gary didn't estimate that length correctly, so we have to do this again.
All right. Take that off to pull his black lawyer out and pull it up a little longer. Yeah, if you have it too long, it'll fall at the bottom. So but after you've done it a couple of times?
Well, I said that I've done a couple thousand times and I still had a problem, didn't I? All right. So we'll thread this back through here. And just like magic. Oops, I should say plug this in here. So you want to plug the power in last?
Make sure Motor is Plugged In
Make sure the motors plugged in first. If you plug in the power before the other things, when you when you plug in the motor or whatever, you'll get an error message. OK, so we plug this in. And then you'll see it'll start to go to its start up procedure.
So what now does is moving the piston into the right spot, so it's back in service and it's getting the whole valve set up for doing its job for water filtration, water softening, tannins, whatever it's it's being used for.
All right. So while we're well, we got the face plate off, I'd like to talk about air quotes, so occasionally you'll get an error code. And one of the most common error codes is that the unit can't find home.
And that may be because there was a power blip when it was during one of its cycles. Could be a number of reasons. Could be a bit of a hiccup with the piston going back and forth or something like that.You get an error code on the screen. When you do take the face plate off, disconnect the power, give it about a minute or so so it totally powers down. And what that does, it'll reset the valve and then you plug it back in.
The Four Pistons have Four Pins on the Power Connection
So I know what some of you were thinking at this point. You're thinking, Well, Gary, if I just unplug it from the wall, that does exactly the same. Actually, it doesn't because the four pistons, there are the four pins that are on the power connection, as you'll see.
They control that reset. OK, so it's important that you unplug it from here when you want to do the reset. So again, why we got the faceplate off. Let's talk a little bit too about troubleshooting. So one of the troubleshooting areas that you might run into sometimes, and I find this time of year in the spring in cottage country here, when folks have had these units in storage or they've had them laid out horizontally for winter, when they hook up the cottage, get everything running again in the spring, sometimes they'll put it all together and they'll get a blank screen, so they got a blank screen.
If you get a blank screen, it's one of two problems either the transformer that plugs into the wall is defective or the circuit board is defective. How do you troubleshoot that? Well, the first thing you do is you unplug this and then get a voltage tester and you just put a voltage tester in these pins. I've got a video about that. If you just search on my Gary the Water Guy YouTube channel, you'll see a great video on blank screen, 4:00 water softener, and it shows you how to test for voltage if you're getting voltage here. Bad news You need a new circuit board if you don't get voltage here, a little better news. All you need is a new transformer. We have the circuit boards and the transformers on our e-commerce website.
Connection to the Drain and Brine Line Connection
This is the connection to the drain and this is the connection the brine line, if it's a water softener, it goes to a brine life. If this is a back washable filter. In other words, it doesn't use brine or dust.
It's not an air over media, iron or sulfur filter, or it doesn't use the air injector that would go up here. Then there just be a plug here. All right, so let's talk about the drink connection for a second.
So this is half inch pex that goes to the drain and this is the compression fitting. So for a water softener, for everything except for what uses air. This works great. If you're using this as an iron filter or sulfur filter or FOB,C,K iron, sulfur and manganese filter.
I don't recommend using this fitting that comes with. And I'll show you a little closer way. So like I said, this is just a compression fitting. So the more you tighten this, the more it holds it in. But the problem is when it's when you when it's used as one of those air over media filters, there's compressed air inside the top of this tank. So when it starts going into its backwash cycle, it has to blow that air out of there. And I've actually seen this blow right off. So what we do in those situations, we use this.
So this is a standard female three quarter inch thread to half inch packs fitting. OK. So you can buy this at any Home Depot store or whatever. And and what we do is we just unscrew this fitting, unscrew this fitting that comes with the equipment and then use this one instead.
Some Teflon tape on here, obviously. And put that on there. OK, and then connect the packs to it. And that's a nice tight seal, so you don't have to worry about blowing off. So. So that's one suggestion I have if you're using it for air over media iron sulfur filter.
Now, suggestion while we're here, is that these two are both the same size. So in under no circumstances should you ever disconnect both of them. Because there's a 5050 chance when it comes time to put it back together, you put it back the wrong way and that will be disastrous.
So I always suggest doing one at a time. All right. So and it has these little C clips, B C clips here. I guess that would be an E clip, wouldn't it? The camera picking that up? No, too close.
There is this clip, and that's what locks it in place. Always make sure it's clicked all the way in and then pull up on it just to make sure that it's tight. All right. So this is like I say, this is the Bryant connection.
So this would be for a water softener or a tanning filter. And so again, you've got the same E clip, he just pull up on that. And that's what that looks like in the camera focus. Yes, it can.
Quick Connect Fitting
All right. Great. And so that's the fitting. So this is a quick connect fitting, OK, this connection here. So this is like a john guest fitting or a shark bite, that kind of thing. So to disconnect this, you push this in.
Pull the collar back with your fingernails and then pull it out. All right. This is the collar that I was referring to. This caller right here, it's great. See that you would pull that back, OK? And then to connect this, you push it in until it stops. But don't stop there. Keep going. Push it in and you'll notice it slides in about another quarter of an inch or so. And that's how it locks in place so you can pull back on it. So that's how that connection is made for the brain line.
All right. So for an air over media FOB,C,K, it has a different, different connection than for the bright line. It has one of these. OK, so this is when it goes through the ear over media systems. They have a 15 minute backwash and then they have a 30 minute air draw. And this is where the air comes in. So it has a check valve in here, the check valves actually here. And the reason has a check valve is that it can suck air in through this side here and fill the top of the tank with air.
OK. But when it goes through its cycle, it cannot let any water back out. OK. So again, it's the same thing as what we saw over here. Quick connect fitting that goes there. So when this unit is going through its cycle, when it's an error over media, iron or sulfur filter, when it's going through its cycle, the first cycle is a 15 minute backwash. And the second minute second cycle is a 30 minute. It'll say brine drop, but it's actually an air draw when it's going through that cycle. You should if you listen close to here, you should hear gurgling sound and that's air being sucked in through here.
No Gurgling Sound Means Something is Wrong
OK. And if you don't hear that air gurgling sound, there's something wrong. And so I have a great video. You see if I can find it here. No, this one right here. Oops, too far. There, so if you see this video here.
This is iron and sulfur filter not working. And so it's a great troubleshooting video that will help you do that. So what's involved in that? Typically, what the problem is is there's an injector inside here that's clogged. And I would say if there's an Achilles heel of these as an air over media system, it's the injector gets clogged fairly readily. It depends how much iron you have. I mean, some folks at last eight to ten years before getting clogged. Some other folks, it might only last two or three years to get clock. The good news is it's super easy to fix, and that video shows you how to fix it, but I'm going to show you how to fix it right now, too. All right. So. This is the this is the cap for the injector. So unscrew that. Now it's not always hang tight, although I do find that hand tight is enough to seal the water on these units surprisingly enough.
All right. So this is the cap. And if you look inside here. Can see it on the campus. I could see it on the camera. You can just barely see it there. It's blue. You see the blue. All right.
So to get that out? Normally you can just use the cap. Look, we got the power cord messed up. Normally you can just use the edge of the cap here to pry that out. So if we go in here, by the way, this is sitting up on a box, so it's about the same height as I am
normally it wouldn't be this high. All of this is 62 inches tall, this unit. All right. So there's the injector there. OK, so can the camera focus? Yes, it can. All right. And if you look at it from this angle, there's a very small hole in that injector.
And what'll happen is in time that will become clogged. That hole is part of a venturi in there. And as water slowly passes through when it's in the air draw or the brain cycle, that's what creates the suction to suck the air in through here.
Or if it's a water softener to suck the brain from the brine tank and run it into this tank. OK, if this is dirty, it isn't going to happen. So you can clean that. You just have to be very careful that you clean it.
I suggest a pointy wooden toothpick because you don't want to enlarge that hole. If you enlarge that hole, you can have all kinds of problems with the system. Also, these injectors come in different colors. The different colors are for the different sized tank.
So make sure when you're ordering the replacement one for your system that you order the same color. And again, we have this on our website. They're quite inexpensive. I think they're are less than $15. So most of the time in the field, we don't even clean them, we just replace them.
Rare Occasion of too Much Iron Media
So once you've replaced it? Oh, OK. Push it all the way down. Now it's very rare, but I've seen it happen where that will not come out. There's just so much iron in there and it hasn't been clean for forever and and will not come out.
I've tried. I had one customer not too long ago. I tried with using the cap didn't work. I tried needle nose pliers didn't work. I tried a whole bunch of things. And finally, I actually ripped the the injector apart, just trying to pry it out.
And I finally tried out. I actually put a very small sheet metal screw inside the hole to for it to get something to grip too, and then pulled it out with a pair of pliers. But that's only happened to me once in 18 years, so it's pretty rare.
Changing or Cleaning the Injector
But so again, changing or cleaning the injector in these systems is super easy. If you compare that to to some of the other troller, the flex valve water suffers. They're much more difficult actually before I do this. I should mention, too, so I'm a big believer of plumbers, clear silicone grease and especially when it comes to oil rings. And so there's an old ring around here, so that's what I would do. I would put plumbers class of silicone grease around here. And the reason I do that is to lubricate this whole ring because if it's not lubricated, what will happen is the whole ring will scratch slightly and once a scratch slightly.
Guess what? It's going to leak so. So if you can do that? So again, that's one of the many tips and tricks I promised you this evening with this live stream. All right, great. So while we're at this end of the so this is the bypass we spoke about a little bit earlier.
So if you if this is being installed in the cabin or a cottage or something like that where this is an iron filter, water softener, tan and filter any of those things and you want a is it because you're going to turn the heat off during the winter time?
Again, I've got a video that goes into great detail about that. But again, I'll just make it quick for you because we're talking about this great valve. So that what you would do is obviously you turn off the water, you drain the rest of the cottage and then you can either bypass this and and then disconnected.
So as you can see, as I just did, this unscrews without any tools. So once you've unscrewed it, OK, then you can lay this down and drain the water out. Now, someone in the video made a comment that, you know, it's a lot more difficult than Gary showed in the video.
And I guess that's true. So you do need to lay it horizontally, and it actually works better if the bottom is higher than this end to get the water out, and it kind of blew out. But I mean, the other thing you can do is you can get a fitting and make connector for a compressor.
Lay Softener Horizontally for Wintertime
That's what we do when we winterize these for local customers in this area. We put together a fitting and we hook it up to an compressor and we blow the water out and then lay it down horizontally. It is key that you lay it down horizontally for the wintertime.
Just the past week, we had a customer contact us where they didn't lay it down horizontally. They left us standing up and it actually burst the tank when it froze. So just be careful of that. All right. But again, like I say, that clock makes this valve so easy to work on and so easy to work with. two. All right. So let me talk a little bit more about the programming and resolve itself. So if you were to purchase one of these systems for us either on an e-commerce site or a DIY to do from our store, they come preprogrammed and all you need to do is if it's a water softener, you need to program how hard the water is. And I'll show you how easy that is to do actually put the faceplate on. It's a little easier to follow along. Can you see that? Yes, I turn it this way, so you can see the scoop this way, so you can see the the information up on the screen a little bit better. All right, great. So when it comes to some basic program, you press the next and the up button at the same time. The first thing is the region days, so that's how many days between region. And again, this is how they come from the factory three days.
And that's the default that we usually start with. We don't like to let an iron filter. That's what this is programmed as an iron or sulfur filter. We don't like to leave it go more than three days. We don't want the iron to build up inside the tank.
If Your in Seasonal Property or Cottage Cabin
So typically, three days is the default. And so here's a great question, too if you're in a seasonal property cottage cabin, that kind of thing. And let's say you go away at the end of the weekend and turn the water off.
Well, this isn't going to clean itself after three days because the water's off if you think it's going to clean itself, but it's not going to do that. So in scenarios like that, what I suggest to folks is ideally an hour before it's time for you to go press this and hold the region button, start a regeneration
and let it go through its whole cycle. And then when it finishes, shut off your water and go back to the city or wherever you go. And and then when you come back up, put the water back on, you're ready to go.
Second Option for Regeneration
Another second option of doing that not quite as good, but almost as good, is that if you've been away for a month or something like that, when you come up to use the cottage or the cabin on the weekend or for an after an extended period of time away, turn the water back on, regenerate it right, then
right there, hold down the button for five seconds. Let it go through its cycle and again, you'll be good to go. So, so that's that's one way that you can manually override it. OK, so Richard, every three days we press next.
So that's what time is going to reach in the default time is 2:00 a.m. Just make sure if you've got multiple pieces of equipment like a water softener, iron filter ten and filter back washable filter, that kind of a scenario.
Make sure that all the equipment is regenerating at different times and be mindful of how long the cycles are. This one's only 45 minutes, but a water softener or ten and filters an hour and a half. So just make sure that those times don't overlap.
Press next again and next again. So one thing that you can do with this five button a valve that has three in the two rows. So the two rows of three and two is if you press next when it's in service, it's going to show use flow rate.
So it's going to tell you so right now you can go in the house or the cottage or the cabin and run some water somewhere, and you can see how many gallons per minute of water actually flowing through this unit right now.
And that's a handy feature. I run into situations. I had a customer several years ago that was complaining that his water softener wasn't working and I was using tons of salt, but it just wasn't working properly. So he wanted a new one.
So he put it in a new one footer, a new one. And he said, You know what? This new one you put in is using pretty much the same amount of salt as the other one said, OK, well, let's have a look.
We went, we set it on here and I said, Is anybody using any water? He said no, but it was showing point two gallons per minute. So there was some water being run in that house all the time at point two gallons per minute.
So if you do the arithmetic, that's a lot of water in a day. And what happened was the toilet that was running so slowly point two gallons per minute that you couldn't hear it, but this detected it. So that's a great feature that's built in if we press next again, they don't say how many, how many days are remaining, OK, but if this was a water softener was programed as a water suck and will actually tell you how many gallons of capacity are remaining in this. Now it doesn't go right down to zero. It typically goes down to its reserve capacity, which is usually somewhere around ten or 15.
Sorry, about 60 to 70 gallons of water trigger regeneration for that night. What does that look like? So today we had a phone call and this is what was being displayed. So can you see that? Yes, I think you can right up here see where it says region today, flashing off and on.
Customers said it keeps saying that, but nothing's happening. I don't see anything happening. And that's because it's just telling you that tonight at 2:00 a.m., the time is programed in here for it to reach in. That's when it's going to reach and it's just warning you pre-warning that that's going to happen tonight.
Filtering Display and Other Verbiage
All right. So we talked about the word filtering display here. So again, on a metered system like this, it'll say filter. Ring up here, if the set up has a water soft or when there's water flowing through the water softener, it'll say the word softening up here to tell you that the meter is working and that water's
flowing through through the system. All right. So some other programming that we can get into here again really quickly. I have more videos in depth on this. So if you press the next on the down button, it'll allow you to change it between Oops, I can go back 14 in filtering or softening.
OK, so filtering is what's classified for, like I say, NFLPA, FCF, OK and iron sulfur filter. That's how those are set up. So then you press next. So now you can actually change the backwash time. So if you have a situation where you know your, well, pump can't keep up that well or you've got a holding tank
where the backwash water is going and you may want to cut that down by a few minutes, it does make a fair amount of difference if you cut that down, compress next. And this is the air draw cycle.
Further Programming the Unit for Your Needs
So again, if you find that water pretty tight, then you can change that down by maybe five minutes or something like that at the time. And the opposite is also true. If you find that you're that you know it's after it regenerates, it takes care of the iron, takes care of the sulfur in that.
But toward the end of the second day or something like that, you start to get the symptoms back again. So again, you can increase this time. Press next. But generally, right? OK, this is how it comes right out of the box.
So you don't have to do all this programing for these air over media systems. All you have to do is set the current time next and next. OK, so that's the current time. So how important is the current time?
Well, it's actually very important. It doesn't care what time it is right now, but the problem is if you don't set the right current time, it doesn't know when 2:00 a.m. when it's region, time is so whenever it sinks, 2:00 a.m. is, that's when it's going to regenerate and you don't want it.
Regenerating had a call from someone today and they were saying they had a relative there and they got up early in the morning and they went to to run some water and the water was really brown. And they heard all kinds of racket downstairs from where their water treatment equipment was.
What was happening was the iron sulfur filter was going through its cycle. And these folks have a lot of iron in their water and and at the stage it was that it actually diverted that water through through the faucet, so they got brown water coming through.
Should you hear water trickling in the tank?
So and that's why it's important to make sure you set the region time at a time when there's very little water usage in the home. All right. So I'm seeing a question came through from Dave McLellan, but Clark is set up as an iron filter when water is turned on in the house.
Should you hear water trickling in the tank? No, Dave, by the way. Thanks for the question. No, you won't hear anything as the user. And that's what folks that have never had water filtration equipment. And we start talking about these equipments because they've bought a rural property or a cottage or something like that.
They'll say, How much noise does this stuff make? And I said, well, only makes noise when it's regeneration. It doesn't make any noise at all. When it's in use, water just flows through. That's it. Thanks for your question, Dave.
Any more questions before Live Stream ends?
Anybody else have any questions, please? This livestream is ending in six minutes, and I'd love to answer your questions live if you do have any questions after the live stream stunt. Just put it in the comments down below.
I do answer all questions. I try to get to them within a day or two. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer, but I do answer all questions and I really appreciate getting them. And especially if you have any ideas for upcoming videos or upcoming live streams.
Other Programming for Metered Units
I'd love to get your input. Very important to me. All right. So there's other programming that you can go into with these two. They will tell you they give you 66 days of water history. Now it has to be a metered unit to do that metered unit.
So typically, it's a water softness, a metered unit ten and filter ten or filters a little bit different. So a ten and filter what's a tent and filter looks like a water softener. Use a salt like a water softener.
In fact, if you see them both side by side, they look identical. Tenant filter removes color from water. What's what's tenants? What's what's the color? What is tenants? So tenants is an organic. So iron is a mineral, and often if you have iron in your water, you get those rusty stains while tenants.
You also get sort of brown staining, but it's from an organic and often in at least in this area. Here we have a lot of cedars. So as a cedar roots decompose, they tint the water and then that tinted water gets into the aquifer and it takes your water.
So it's often misdiagnosed as iron. So just be careful if you have if you have colored water and you're calling someone in one of the first questions, I always I would suggest asking them, Do you know how to differentiate between iron and tannins?
Because a lot of the guys don't. And we've corrected a lot of systems where someone's misdiagnosed it as iron put in an iron filter doesn't work. They call me. They call the supplier back a couple times and then somehow, for some reason, the guy doesn't call them back anymore.
And it's because they. Put in the wrong equipment, so so be careful of that with with tenants. Tenant filter uses more salt in a water softener does because it regenerates more often. All right, great. So what didn't I talk about so far?
The Float Assembly
OK, let me talk about the float assembly. So this is a question I've got. I've gotten actually a couple of times recently and that is we had to do it yourselfer. Purchase a tenant actually was both tenant filters and it was within the last month or so.
And so this is the float that goes inside the brine tank. OK. And when when we ship them to you, they have this tape on the end. And when you take the tape off again, you'll see a fitting on here, which you'll see a little part.
Looks like this. How can that focus? Yes, it does. Little part that looks like this, and you'll see a fitting on the end of here that looks a whole lot like a John guest type fitting or quick connect fitting.
And that's exactly what it is. They have to be careful with this because there's a clip on here. You say it like that. All right, there. All right, so we can see there's a sea cliff on here. See, she could.
And so you pull that out. And again, this is a quick not fitting like a shark bite or a John gas type fitting. So you have to pull that clip out first. You take the tubing, you shove it into the fitting as far as you think it stopped.
OK, but then you push further and it goes in, like I say, about another quarter of an inch and it needs to go all the way in like that and you need to lock it with this clip. Otherwise, it's not going to work.
So in both of the instances, what I got a phone call, they had someone help them with the installation and and they didn't remove the clip and they didn't push this all the way home. So what was happening was the tannin filter worked perfectly when they first installed it.
But then when it went through its regeneration cycle, instead of sucking the water, the brine from the brine tank through this tube and into the brine, the brine elbow at the top of the chanin filter, it didn't do that OK, so it didn't regenerate properly.
So after about a week or ten days or something left, they called. They said, Hey, this tannin filter worked perfectly for three or four days, but now it doesn't work. And by the way, it's not using any salt or they're saying that, Oh, I got a lot of water in my brain tank.
I can't figure out why. And that's why, because this fitting wasn't pushed all the way. And so that's something to check for if you've purchased a water soccer or ten filter or something like that from us online and either install it yourself or had a local plumber help you out with the installation?
What did we not talk about so far?
All right, great. What didn't I talk about so far? Oh, that's so this is a plug. OK? So if the unit that you have is a back washable filter like a back washable sediment filter, back washable carbon filter or that kind of thing.
Instead of having an injector in there, it'll have one of these plugs. OK? This one's a little beat up because I pulled it out of this unit to show you because this was originally sold. Yes. Like I say, this is a Frankenstein.
So this I just cobble pieces together to use for cottage chores and home shows and things like that to show people the equipment. It's incredibly light and and that's because there's no media inside the tank, so it's easier to move around. But but this is the plug that I pulled out. So one thing that people often ask me about is this backwash spill sediment filters and back washable carbon filters. Why would someone have that? Well, if you're on a municipal water system and there's a lot of chlorine in your water, it's a great way to get rid of that chlorine. Typically, they backwash once a week, so as the water passes through, it removes the chlorine from your water. It's installed before the water softener because water softness, hate chlorine, and that shortens the life expectancy of the media inside.
And then once a week, they backwash clean themselves up, and they typically last about 15 or 20 years, and you never have to change a filter. So instead of going with a filter cartridge and they have to have a filter wrench like you probably see behind me on the wall over there, probably out of focus, but as
a carbon filter to pre-filter your water for your families, you don't get that horrible chlorine in your home. That's that's one. This is a great alternative for a back washing a carbon filter, back washing sediment filter that's typically used for folks that either have a lot of dirt in their water, a well water or surface water people that are drawing from a lake you may be drawing from a lake. So around here, the lakes often have tannins, so scenarios like that I'll have a back washing sediment filter. They'll they may have a back wash and carbon filter to get rid of chemicals in the water, herbicides, pesticides, that kind of thing.
And then it would go into a tan and filter, clean up the remove the color from the water. And then from there it would go into a ultraviolet light to kill any bacteria. And then you always need a five micron free filter before an ultraviolet light.
So that's that's usually the system for surface water. Again, for, well, water really depends what's in your water. I mean, in our area here, we have some pockets that the water is really bad. So they've got, like I say, they've got tenants in their water, they have iron in their water.
Some have sediments in their water, sulfur. You know that rotten egg smell. You know, that kind of hard water, all that kind of stuff is quite common in this area. By the way, Gary, the water guy, my YouTube channels carry the water.
When do new Gary the Water Guy videos come out?
GeekComp, we have new videos every Saturday morning, usually 5:00 a.m. I release them. The only time we don't release one Saturday mornings when we released a live stream like we are right now the Thursday night before. But we've got over 200 videos, 250 videos on that YouTube channel.
Lots of great information there for do it yourselfers plumbers. Anyone interested in the water treatment industry? We really like to share information with you. I've been in this industry for 18 years and there's a lot of great information.
Some common questions that I get about servicing the clock. I've gone through most of them with you so far. Life expectancy 20 years plus. I mean, the Valley's been around since the year 2000. I can probably count on one hand how many that we've replaced in those 20 years.
Very, very, very few. And you know, we had a couple of customers that, you know, just wanted to start fresh. It's been 18, 19 years and they say, You know what, I just want a whole brand new system and going into retirement, I'd like to start fresh in my retirement.
We've had a couple that something really horrible has happened to them because of fires and things like that. So they do last an incredibly long time. They are made in USA and they're a great product. Typically, you won't see a black velvet water software being sold as a clock water softener.
They've got a lot of restrictions about that. Ours are sold under the houM water cure name. A few water cures our own private label brand. That's kind of the best of the best. And and that's that's how we label it.
Water eStore US and CA has everything you need
We have over 15 hundred items on our e-commerce website, by the way. Our e-commerce website, waterestore.com is the U.S. waterestore.ca the Canadian one. two separate websites. We offer free shipping in both of them.
But if you're from Canada, you need to order from the Canadian one off from the U.S. you need to order from the U.S. when to get the free shipping. No customs and all that other kind of stuff involved the U.S. ones we ship from U.S. warehouses.
Most of the time, we have a little bit of stock that we shipped from Canada, the Canadian one. Again, we ship most of it from Canadian warehouses. A little bit gets shipped from U.S. warehouses to Canada. But like I say, it all works out really well.
Any questions about Water Treatment?
Any questions about your water treatment? Like I say, you can put them down below in the comments section down below. I love to read, read your comments and love to respond to them if you need your water tested.
We do a basic water test. We don't charge for that. You can mail that to us. Where do you mail it? You mail to water store 1004 King Street Midland, Ontario Alpha are zero. B eight is our postal code and we need about 500 milliliters to check that.
We got another question here from Valley Green. Oh, he's just thanking me for the live stream. It's all 54 hours here in Ireland. Well, thanks a lot. I really appreciate you folks in Ireland tuning in and staying up until 1:00 in the morning to watch this live stream live.
Boy, that's dedication. I really appreciate that. That really makes me feel good and like, I'm not wasting my time doing these things and and that's what it's all about. Like I say, I simplify water filtration to help you conquer crappy water for your families.
I'm not here to tell you there's something wrong with you. Excuse me to tell you that there's something wrong with your water. If you and your families have identified that they're staining their smell, there's discoloration, tastes awful, those kinds of things.
I'm here to help you with those concerns. Like I say, we're not here to tell you what's wrong with your water. But like I say, if you have if you have a concern about your water, check out our website.
Like I say, there's tons of information on there, and it's just about every product on our website. By the way, if you scroll down below the pictures, you'll see some squares that say how it works, how to install things like that.
Those are actually YouTube videos. So if you click on that, you'll take your right to one of my YouTube videos that answer that information so you should do a livestream or vote once a month, once every five weeks or so, depending on the summertime.
I'm always eager to get new topics, new topic ideas. This was a little bit different one for us so far. We haven't done a tear down in a rebuilt on a product before, and I know the clock WC one is very popular valve and it's all over the place.
How do you know if you have a factory as one? That's a great question. Usually one of the giveaways is the bypass valve. OK, so if you see the bypass valve has these pointy levers on it, there's a couple of other companies out there that have red levers, but this is the only one that I've seen that
has these pointy ones. And that usually is is a major clue that it's a clock valve. Now some of them, some of the private label ones I've seen out there being sold under the water depot name and a few other names in that have the valve have a bigger faceplate on them and different configuration, that kind of
thing. But again, if you look for that bypass, it's a classic valve. And if you pull the top off, the everything inside is exactly the same as what I showed you. You have the circuit boards are configured a little bit differently.
This is a four button, which is a super rare one. We have very few customers that have a four button one I. Sometimes see that more in the U.S. market than I do here. And this is a replacement circuit board with the five buttons across.
That's probably the most common one. Up until about five to seven years ago, that was the most common one. But like I say, this configuration now is quite common. The WC one, C C and C C C C actually stands for the second C is for custom the first CS Canadian Canadian custom.
But again, we do offer this to our U.S. customers. Shipped from Sarasota is where we ship these from in the U.S. and we've got lots of customers in the U.S. We help a lot of folks all over, including the nice gentleman from Ireland.
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