Water Softener/Tannin Removal Controller Issue

I have 3 pieces of water purification equipment in my pump room (long story).  A water softener, peroxide injector, and a tannin remover.  Each of these has an IWT-165 controller (Independent Water Tech).  They all do their backwash activity at different times under different conditions (volume, time, etc.).  My problem is with the salt consumption.  We are only around half-time, and there are only two of us usually there, so there is a lot of salt usage that is unnecessary (40kg/mo.).
 
I can easily use my UPB infrastructure to turn the controllers off when we are away.  Actually, my plan is to have them disabled when the alarm system is activated.  However, the only way I can see to do it is to drop the power to the controllers.  The problem is that the capacitor/battery backup is only good for 48hrs.
 
So, I had the water contractor provide me with a test unit hoping that I would be able to find the capacitor/battery and keep it charged.  He suggested I just disengage the motor circuit on the controller.  Turns out I can do that, but the controller knows its disconnected and sets off an audible alarm (and halts the backwash).
 
The question is; Does anyone have any information or suggestions?  I tried finding the IWT-165 schematics on-line but they are not available.
 
Many thanks,
 

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but the backup is to only maintain the system time, which is only for the regeneration time setting.....so basically other than a random regeneration time, I don't see foul in killing the power to the units, although you may need to reset once you're onsite to have the cycles occur when you truly want them, however if the cycle times are programmed to start/stop differently, the time of day is technically irrelevant, other than demand, no?

Pastaboy said:

I have 3 pieces of water purification equipment in my pump room (long story).  A water softener, peroxide injector, and a tannin remover.  Each of these has an IWT-165 controller (Independent Water Tech).  They all do their backwash activity at different times under different conditions (volume, time, etc.).  My problem is with the salt consumption.  We are only around half-time, and there are only two of us usually there, so there is a lot of salt usage that is unnecessary (40kg/mo.).
 
I can easily use my UPB infrastructure to turn the controllers off when we are away.  Actually, my plan is to have them disabled when the alarm system is activated.  However, the only way I can see to do it is to drop the power to the controllers.  The problem is that the capacitor/battery backup is only good for 48hrs.
 
So, I had the water contractor provide me with a test unit hoping that I would be able to find the capacitor/battery and keep it charged.  He suggested I just disengage the motor circuit on the controller.  Turns out I can do that, but the controller knows its disconnected and sets off an audible alarm (and halts the backwash).
 
The question is; Does anyone have any information or suggestions?  I tried finding the IWT-165 schematics on-line but they are not available.
 
Many thanks,

Click to expand...

 
It sounds like your water softener is set up to do a regeneration cycle every few days (e.g. it is programed for Timer Mode). If I'm reading the manual for this controller correctly, it appears that you can set it for Meter Delayed mode, which will regen only after the capacity of the water softener has been exhausted. If you select this mode, it shouldn't regen while you are away, unless it has to because the other parts of your system have been consuming softened water. 
 
No need to mess with the wiring of the IWT-165, just program it correctly.

Thanks to both DELInstallations and RAL for your input. I'll check the demo unit I have to see if the clock is the only setting lost. I've shortened the regen time on the demo so it should be easy to see if a long outage causes a full reset. Also, I'm in agreement with RAL that Meter Delayed should remedy the problem. Perhaps I've focused on the tannin problem and should look at MD for the other two controllers as well.

I have some work to do on this. Thanks again for your insights. It takes a lot of elapsed time to see if a strategy is working so I'll sign off for now.

Regards

From the few water softeners I have dealt with they regenerate based on metered volume or time, whichever comes first. There is no "delay".
 
This is done to avoid caking and bridging inside the water softener resin. If chunks of lime and resin accumulate and then are ever expelled from your resin tank, when they start to dissolve again, by strong pressure and flow with little restriction it can pass those chunks into your house plumbing system and plug it up.
 
This sounds easy to fix, but it isn't in some cases. My son just went through this and after getting almost every plumbing fixture replaced, a year later is still arguing with insurance how to replace the steam jets in his shower stall. 
 
Your softener tank requires minimum periodic cycles to stay loose inside. Get a softener expert to measure your hardness and set it up correctly. It may save you a lot of agro and money.

Here was dealing with salt and iron extraction. 
 
Drinking water Iron levels were so high here that the local hospital was defaulting all incoming patients with blood thinners (until they killed one).
 
Many neighbors quit processing the water and went to drinking bottled water (3rd world banana republic country style).
 
I was using way too much salt here and was doing an every day regeneration with all copper plumbing.  The humidfier was using some water in the winter.  I went to a delivery service as I got tired of carrying bags of salt.  The price was better than the a la carte purchasing of salt and the kid delivering the salt also would fill up the softener. I kept the baseline at about 16-20 bags of salt.  Redid all of the programming on the softner reading the manual some (testing water some).  Went to an every 3-4 day regen and my salt usage went way down.  The softner cryptic with multiple non intuitive button pressing and a old LED display where you had to match display numbers with manual (real PITA).  The 9VDC battery only was for the time and the schedules remained when powering off the device.  I guess too you could just put in a separate circuit to the battery to keep it going while shutting off or disconnecting the main power.  (which still was only maybe 200 mA).

My issue is a bit different. The softness of the water is not bothering us. Sometimes we notice it's a bit harder than at other times. The real issue is the tannins because the water turns a "tea-like" color. It's still potable, but it is a bit ugly and will eventually stain the white fixtures.

My water guy thinks we may need a larger settling tank which I think will be the next step. We have also discussed drilling a new well, but that's very expensive and my not yield better results.

For now I'm going to play with the programming and keep detailed records in the hope that we can determine the best programming and tank sizing analytically.

One again thanks to all for the dialog.

Resin ion exchange filters either soften water to 0 PPM or they aren't working (resin is saturated). This sounds like your tank isn't large enough to handle the volume.

Sounds like iron.

Here the issue was the color of the water being red in the toilets and changing colors of the clothes being washed.
 
Outside water spigets / hose connections / sprinklers all had crusty blue deposits. 
 
Note too that this was city provided water via their wells.