Andy Hall wrote:
On 2007-08-28 19:51:54 +0100, Unix Guru said:
Hmm..

I have a Kinetico that is now 22 years old.

About 5 years ago, it developed a fault that the main valves were
letting by and the regeneration cycle wasn't working.

I took it apart and discovered that two of the four valve plungers had
split apart and that the metering wheel wasn't going round properly.

I found a local water softener outfit who weren't a Kinetico dealer (at
least at the time) but were happy to source spares. Total outlay was
about £30 in plungers and a new metering wheel. I decided that it was
worth betting this much. Had it been £100, then no.

In the event, I stripped it down, cleaned it and fitted the replacements
- I suppose it took an hour or so.

It's been performing faultlessly ever since. If it fails any time
now, I am still ahead in terms of cash and time invested.

There's lots of gears and bits in the Kinetico control, but as long as
one is meticulous about which bits belong in which layer, it's not
difficult. The other two points are not to tighten the screws too much
and to put silicone grease on the O-rings and seals

My Kinetico has a leaking cylinder (which could be replaced), a leaking
inlet/outlet manifold (ditto), the meter would occasionally stick, and
the unit would often fail to soften. I finally gave up on the unit when
the Kinetico engineer proved unable to fix the leak. I declined his
further services.

Perhaps I could buy the parts and fix the unit myself, but frankly it's
caused so much trouble I just want to dump it.

One idea that does occur to me is to simply replace the Kinetico head
with a commodity valve/controller. Then I could re-use the good cylinder
and perhaps the enclosure too. But I need to research it more first.