In my last article, I wrote about the steps that a typical water softener goes through in the regeneration process. These include back flushing the mineral bed, brining and rinsing the mineral bed, and usually a fast flush to resettle it. This is all accomplished by a control valve. Control valves vary widely in their design, and it seems every softener manufacturer has its own type of control valve. I believe that many manufacturers do not manufacture the control valves on their units, but purchase them from companies that only make control valves.
In my working years, I have seen many control valve designs — some pretty simple and some rather complicated. I’m going to write about the advantages and disadvantages of these designs. The first water softeners I ever saw when I was just a young man were regenerated manually using a series of globe and gate valves. By opening and closing the valves, the operator could produce the four processes needed to regenerate the softener. The upside of this was that manual valves are pretty darn reliable and a malfunction would be unusual. The downside was that the person doing the regeneration had to understand what valves to open and close, and to not make a mistake.