I notice it was done, but it's not reciprocal. The Canadian folks don't have a link to the Winter Sowing Forum in their related forums list. Claire

For a few, going on several, years now the "suggestion" forum has not been a good place to offer up suggestions. Does anyone have any suggestion as to how to get "suggestions" to be effective?

JAL: Good input. I have researched this, but I like to run my thoughts past people with more experience then myself. I like your numbers, but the issue is that I'm pushing the efficiency as much as I can. Right now, my calculations assume a 57 gallons per day per person. Which is pretty low, but it's the only way to hit the sweet spot with my family size, hardness and 64,000 grain capacity. So, I'm at the edge of being aggressive with my numbers and leaning towards fiction. Particularly, since I have 5 children (3 gone and moved out of the house), but come home often. Then we have lots of guests. Right now we have two young Chinese ladies from Taiwan staying with us for 5 days. So, really, I should have gotten a larger unit like the 80,000 grain capacity. But, that's another $140, also, I have real space concerns--where I've installed the unit. So, a bigger unit would just push that envelope. I agree the OPWC calculation are not optimum, but giving my needs, it's not so bad. Besides, I have bigger fish to fry; so wasteing some salt to free me up, is not so bad. My current house is my third foreclosure that I've bought. I buy them, remodel them, them move on. In my current house I've: moved interior walls around, moved the washer and dryer from the basement to the second floor, put in a 7.1 surround sound movie theater in the basement, etc, etc. Then, I have plans for a new major kitchen remodel and a center piece water fall and pond in the back yard. So, I want to move beyond tinkering with the setting on this water softener. The difference between your calculations and OPWC's would cost me about one 40 pound bag of salt every 9 weeks. I like to save money more then the next guy. But, sometimes you get to a point of diminishing returns. Anyways, thanks again for your help. I welcome any other insight that you would want to offer. Best Regards, Stan

I missed your post earlier. If you still need the information: Enter Master Programming Mode DF=Gal VT = St2b OR df2b CT=Fd NT=1 C=48 H=21 RS=SF SF=15 RC=0 (You are using a % reserve rather than a fixed reserve) CR=0 DO=8 RT=2:00 (or another convenient time when you won’t be using water for a couple of hours) Regeneration cycle step times BW1=12 BD=75 BW2=7 RR=12 BF=43 Ensure all days are set to ON, unless you have a specific day of the week when you do not want the softener to regen. CD doesn’t matter unless you set a day to OFF in step 14. FM You shouldn’t have to change this doesn’t matter Exit Master Programming Mode. Pour 7 gallons of water into the brine tank. Add salt. Reset your clock to actual time. At this point it’s a good idea to force the softener to step through the regen steps. There is no need to allow each step to complete. Just leave it in each step long enough to verify that the valve has changed position then move on to the next until you are back in service mode.