I want to install a water softener that will give close to 0.0 hardness in hopes of helping my wife’s dry skin problems. We have city water with no iron and hardness of 6 gpg. Just the two of us (retired), with average daily usage of 120 gallons, 3/4″ plumbing. I’m thinking of using a Fleck 5600 12 day timer at 3# salt dosage, if I can get it that low. Also, I am wondering about using a turbulator. Will it help achieve reliable low hardness? I am afraid of the possibility of the valve not sealing well, and allowing a hardness leak. Your comments, please.

Answer:  While use of a turbulator is primarily advantageous in an onsite well application where iron and sediment may be contained in water, there would not be any downside in using it on city water.  In normal down-flow water softener operation, the water path is down through the resin bed, and up through the riser or turbulator.  It makes  no performance difference in either case, as the water path is the same.  The difference between the two is is that a turbulator mechanically reorganizes the resin bed, to help keep it uniformly packed and eliminate channeling, and assist in sending any accumulated sediment to drain.  A standard riser just uses an up-flow backwash during regeneration to clean the bed (which is normally fine in municipal water applications).  By the way, all of the units we offer come standard with turbulators – including the Fleck 5600 12-day timer system which is featured in our model WS4C – same price if you prefer a standard 1.05 inch riser with gravel underbed – just let us know if purchasing.

However, you are likely to run into a different problem in using a low salt dosage like 3 pounds per cubic foot.  We would recommend that you use at least 9 pounds per ft3 in a standard application to minimize hardness leakage when water passes through a partially exhausted resin bed.  Best regards!