'Can a compression check tell you if the reeds are bad?' No, not at the spark plug hole. What you have to do is check compression in the crankcase, which is necessary for the 2-cycle to run. You can remove the spark plug to make it easier to pull through, then remove the air filter to see if it's blowing air out of the crankcase. Since we already know this one is, now he has to find out what's wrong with the reed valve. Also, they all blow some air out as there is some leakage before pressure builds up enough to close the spring steel reeds, but you should be able to tell if they're leaking bad. The faster you pull it through, the less leakage you will see with good reeds.

The AUTO setting for Max Days/Recharge lets the water use (on demand) trigger regenerations but it will not put regenerations off indefinitely if no water is used. I suspect it overrides at 15 days and tries to regenerate. If you shut off the water and it tries to regenerate you might have problems. The control valve on that softener has the provision to set the maximum number of days that it will go and then force a regeneration if water use doesn't trigger one first. Unfortunately the limit is 15 days on your ECO. Other softeners have a wider range, Fleck 7000SXT goes up to 99 days, and that would do what you want but your ECO won't. If you're going to be gone longer than 15 days then the only thing you can do is shut off the water and pull the plug on the softener. With no power the softener won't regenerate. The down side to pulling the plug is that the control valve may lose all it's settings. So, here are your options... 1. leave the water on and set the Max Days/Recharge setting to # of days days. When you return change the setting back to AUTO. Even if you're gone longer than 15 days you'll cut the regenerations to a minimum. 2. shut the water off and pull the plug on the softener AFTER noting every setting so you can re-program the softener if it loses the settings. 3. buy a softener that allows you more flexibility in programming to do what you want

Irrigation guy came out, saw the troubled zone and walked right over to ANOTHER box buried under some mulch that i had no idea existed. He opened it up and immediately it was clear that one valve was spitting. He turned the flow control back and forth and the problem stopped. HOURS I spent trying to diagnose using the wrong zone box. On the plus side, I feel like I can address most of these issues myself now! Thanks for weighing in just the same. That vibrating valve tip is a great one!

The TFT screens reads Please wait unit lights come on. Internal Flashing in progress. Do not switch off the appliance! This has been the case for 5 days and the freezer does not run while this message is shown. I've done the various power cycles after 4 days despite the message. Anyone have a solution?