It’s probably safe to say that most of us don’t appreciate how much we depend on having regular access to clean water. Of course, we need it to drink, but it’s also crucial to our showers and toilets, dishwashers and washing machines, and everything from mopping the floors to watering the lawn. It’s also crucial for a lot of industries and commercial businesses. Hard water doesn’t perform the way we need it to, and water softeners are the answer to this problem. The Clack water softener valve makes your softener, and your water, work better for you.
What Is Hard Water?
Hard water is fresh water with lots of minerals in it; particularly calcium and magnesium. Hard water gets that way from absorbing these minerals in the aquifers it drains into after it falls as rain. Hard water can be a nightmare to deal with. It’s not unhealthy or dangerous, but it will cost you money, whether you need softened water for your home, commercial building, or industrial use.
What’s the Problem with Hard Water?
Image via Pixabay
Hard water is tough on appliances. The minerals in the water can gum up the works in a dishwasher, hot water heater, washing machine, or anything else that needs water, shortening the useful life of every machine that uses it.
Hard water also builds up in faucets and pipes. Water flow becomes restricted over time, making everything less efficient. You’ll need to replace all these pipes and fixtures more often if you have hard water.
Hard water also makes cleaning a pain. Anything you try to clean, wash, rinse, or wipe down with hard water never seems to come clean as it should. And hard water can make it impossible to use local water for industrial applications.
The Solution
Having a water softener can protect you from all this. However, it may not always be necessary to have a water softener running day in and day out. In that case, having a metered valve like the Clack water softener valve allows you to get the most efficient use possible out of your softener, saving water and salt while still getting the softened water you need.
Replacing a Water Softener Valve
If you’ve just gotten a Clark water softener valve, here are the basic steps involved in replacing your old valve:
- Shut off all water
- Disconnect the old valve start with power, then brine tubing, then drain hose, and finally in and out water lines
- Unscrew the old valve
- Remove the distributer tube from the resin tank
- Put a new distributer tube into the resin tank so it is touching the bottom
- Glue the new tube and wait for it to dry
- Twist your new tube into place on your new valve
- Screw the new valve onto the resin tank
- Attach a bypass yoke pipe
- Reconnect water lines, then drain line, then brine line, then power
- Turn the water on
- Start up the valve
- Set the valve to the correct date and time
- Allow the system to regenerate for 10 to 15 minutes
What Is a Clack Water Softener?
Clack water softeners are a series of controls and valves that come in different units suitable for controlling water softeners in any type of application. You can get them small enough for an apartment or single-family residence all the way up to sizes large enough for commercial buildings or even industrial applications.
Product Specs
Clack water softener meters let you automate control over water flow, calculate how much water you’re using, and run regeneration cycles so you can avoid wasting water and the salt used to soften your water.
Most models have self-diagnostic displays, which takes the guesswork out of troubleshooting if things aren’t working the way you want. Water softeners fitted with Clack water softener valves tend to use a lot less salt than other models. Once you’ve been softening your water for a while, the Clack “look ahead” feature helps you estimate how much salt you’ll need going forward and whether there are patterns to your usage that you can plan for in advance.
Finally, the Clack water softener valve has a backup power supply that keeps it running for two hours if the power goes out. It can retain the memory of your settings for several weeks even without power.
Pricing
Prices for water filtration systems are going to vary depending on how much you need or want to filter at once. You’ll pay anything from $200 to a couple thousand, depending on what volume of water you need to be able to soften. Most residential valves will run between $300 and $700.
How It Compares
In addition to the Clack water softener, we’ve taken a look at four other popular valve units:
- Fleck 5600 Metered Water Softener
- Fleck 9100sxt Digital Control Valve
- 762 Logix Electronic Control Meter
- Hankscraft Digital Metered Softener Valve
Ease of Use
Using the Clack water softener valve is nearly effortless. Once you automate it, the valve will regulate each filtration and softening cycle and can be set with nine different injector sizes with varying draw rates. This should manage nearly any filtration/softening job you need done.
Assembly Time
The Clack water softener valve is quite easy to install if you’re even just a bit handy. It’s also simple to repair, and finding replacement parts is not difficult.
Efficiency
The Clack water softener is one of the most efficient on the market; it uses less salt and wastes less water than nearly anything else you can get.
Warranty
You get a 5-year warranty on all Clack softener and filter controls. This covers material and workmanship under normal use. This warranty is fine, but you can get better with other units.
Pros
- Very efficient
- Easy to control
- Ideal for regulating your filter use
- Programmable
Cons
- Can be hard to find replacement parts
- Expensive
Fleck is another big name in the water softener valve world. They have been around a long time and have earned their reputation for dependable quality. This unit can handle 48,000 grains, has a flow rate of 12 GPM, and weighs just under 100 pounds. The LCD display has two days of backup power, and you can choose from four different operational modes or continuous flow.
Ease of Use
This is as easy to use as anything you could buy. Once it is fitted to your system, it’s not something you need to think about. There’s very little maintenance required, and what is required is simple to do.
Assembly Time
This one is fairly easy to do by yourself. With a bit of skill, you should be able to do it in two hours or less. It has its own bypass valve, which saves you at least one expense in installation.
Efficiency
This is one of the most efficient systems on the market for a medium sized household or smaller business operation.
Warranty
Fleck offers a 10-year warranty on their tanks and a 5-year warranty on their control heads, which is one of the best offers you’ll get in the industry.
Pros
- Quality materials
- Easy to install and program
- Durable
Cons
- Bit bulky and heavy
- Must constantly replace salt pellets
This is a Fleck unit that will work for larger water volumes and is made to run night and day, if necessary. The advanced micro-processor in the control valve has a 48-hour backup power supply in case you lose power. This one can be a bit more complicated to program than some other units, and for best results in programming it, you’ll need to know the precise details of what’s in your water.
Ease of Use
Once it’s up and running, this is easy to use; but programming takes some time and knowledge that you might not have. You’ll also need to keep on top of when to rinse and refresh it.
Assembly Time
On the one hand, installation isn’t really hard for the generally handy person. You don’t need specialized plumbing knowledge to do it. On the other hand, you’ll need to get some extra parts in order to finish installation, which is a bit of a pain.
Efficiency
You’ll get plenty of use out of this machine, and it can handle between 10 and 25 gallons per minute with very little waste.
Warranty
Fleck offers a 10-year warranty on their tanks and a 5-year warranty on their control heads, which is one of the best offers you’ll get in the industry.
Pros
- Durable
- High-capacity
- Easy to program
- Regenerates as needed
Cons
- Very heavy
- May need extra parts for installation
This meter comes with a distributer, bypass adaptor, distributor piping, an elbow joint, and a barb elbow to make installation easy. It can be used both indoors or outdoors, and the single motor means you don’t need solenoids to run it.
This one has a rather unique design with no dynamic seals. That means there’s very little that can wear out and start leaking. You can adjust it to run five or eight cycles, and it features excellent precision sensors so you can know exactly what’s going on and plan for the future.
Ease of Use
Many people love their Autotrol because it’s fairly easy to use: but most of all because it’s easy to fix. It has more moving parts than the Fleck, which means things can go wrong. But it also is a lot simpler and cheaper to repair.
Assembly Time
The Autotrol are pretty standard and easy to install.
Efficiency
Autotrol does the job, but with more moving parts it’s more likely to give you a problem at some point than some of the other brands we’ve considered.
Warranty
You get just a one-year warranty against defects under normal use with this product.
Pros
- Simple to use
- High capacity flow
- Easy to install
Cons
- Very heavy
- Short warranty
- More moving parts than some
Hankscraft’s design offers metered demand control and programmable cycle times. It will default to the typical industry standards, but you can easily program any and every detail to get the performance you want from it.
This unit is lighter than other units with comparable flow rates and is exceptionally easy to program. It has auto reset, a 72-hour battery backup, and a special quick disconnect drain. It is highly energy efficient.
Ease of Use
This is a very simple design that offers complete control over your softener and every setting. The controls are intuitive but will also give you excellent performance even if you don’t adjust them.
Assembly Time
This is a simple set to install, and since the company has been around a while it’s pretty easy to find replacement parts.
Efficiency
This unit doesn’t work quite as efficiently as some of the others. It doesn’t have the same sensors as the Fleck or Clack that ensure you’re never wasting water or salt.
Warranty
You get a 5-year warranty on this unit and all its parts.
Pros
- Very inexpensive
- Programmable
- Easy to use
- Easy to find parts
Cons
- Not as efficient as others
- Less durable than some
Conclusion
For a long time, Fleck and Autotrol have been considered the industry leaders when it comes to water softener valve meters. Clack is the new kid on the block; but there are some good reasons to prefer it.
In many ways, the Clack water softener valve has the best of all the others. It has few moving parts, is cheap to repair, and is extremely reliable. In comparison with all the other valves on our list, we give the Clack 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Featured image from Amazon
