You could go with either a 1.5 or a 2 cubic ft softener. Since your water is chlorinated, go with 2 cubic ft to go longer between regenerations. The Fleck 5600sxt is a reliable valve/controller.

There is no reason to be concerned about magnesium at all - magnesium and calcium are the primary components of hardness. Perhaps you have magnesium confused with manganese?

Thanks for ur expertise on this (new to me subject) Alice,ur right I made a note when I was reading the forum and I confused the 2. If I go with 2 cu ft softener would I regen every 8 days max ?

Hey Alice, I'm finally getting to plumbing my softener in, I went with the 5600stx valve, 2 cu ft purolite c100x10 resin, some questions ,the gravel goes in the tank first then the resin? Just want to be sure.

im planning on installing a drinking water ro system,is the clorine in the water an issue for the filters?

Gravel should fill the bottom "bowl" of the resin tank and cover the bottom basket on the distributor tube.

The chlorine will not harm the RO filter because it should have a carbon filter upstream from the RO filter. A typical RO system will have 1-2 prefilters (sediment, carbon) and 1-2 post filters (carbon, sometimes ion exchange).

For the softener:

1. Enter master programming
2. DF=Gal
3. VT
   = St1b (or Df1b)
4. CT=Fd
5. NT=1
6. TS
   doesn’t matter because you only have one tank
7. C=48
8. H=16
9. RS=SF
10. SF=15
11. RC=0(You are using a % reserve rather than a fixed reserve)
12. DO=8
13. RT=2:00
    (or another convenient time when you won’t be using water for a
    couple of hours)
14. Regeneration
    cycle step times: BW=12, BD=60, RR=10, BF=Here,
    you need to find your BLFC sticker. There is a picture below showing
    you where to look. If the sticker is 0.125 gpm set BF=43,
    0.25 gpm set BF =21,
    if 0.5 gpm set BF=11
15. 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.
16. CD
    doesn’t matter unless you set a day to OFF.
17. FM
    t0.7
18. Exit
    Master Programming Mode.

Pour 5.5 gallons of water into the brine tank. Add enough salt to nearly cover the
water. If you have very high humidity, maintain the salt at about
this level and check it every couple of weeks. If your humidity
isn’t high, after a few regens you can go ahead and fill the brine
tank if you wish. You want to monitor water level for the first few
regens just to ensure everything is functioning as it should. After
that, just make sure you check periodically and keep salt in the
tank.

Thanks againfor helping me out Alice , so by setting the capacity to 48 verses 64 gives me my reserve correct?

Concerning 15 I didn't see anything about that in the programming, but I'll check again.

No. Setting the capacity to 48 sets it at the actual capacity you have when you regenerate with 8 lb salt per cubic ft of resin.

The safety factor (FS) gives you a reserve. Step 8 in Master Programming Mode should prompt you to choose the type of reserve you would like, either FS (Safety Factor - I see that I typed it backwards above - sorry about that) or rc (Fixed Reserve Capacity). Choose FS. Then step 9 should ask for the SF - that's where you enter 15.

When I said 15 I meant line 15 that u wrote, ensure all days are set to on.

ok, I got the capacity part now thanks.

Oh, that 15. It should come from the factory with all days set to ON, so it should be fine unless someone monkeyed with it. The day of week settings should be right after you set the cycle step times.