How do I manually regenerate a Fleck 5600SXT?

With the softener in service, press and hold the Extra Cycle button for five seconds. The valve moves to backwash, which is regeneration step one, and starts counting down the programmed time. That's an immediate regeneration.

While the valve travels to a new position, the display flashes and shows the step it's heading for, such as BW for backwash. Once it arrives, the flashing stops and the display shows the time left in that step. If nothing happens after five seconds, make sure you're on the main service screen, which is where the manual says to press it.

Before you press, run a quick checklist drawn from the manual:

• The bypass valve is closed. An open bypass means hard water no matter what the softener does.
• There is salt in the brine tank, and the salt level sits above the water level.
• The power adapter is plugged into an outlet that is always on, not one controlled by a switch.
• The drain line ends in an air gap of at least 1 inch.

Then start the cycle, and stay nearby for the first few minutes so you can catch a leak or a stuck valve early.

Each press of Extra Cycle during a regeneration jumps the valve to the next step and goes back to normal step timing. On a standard downflow softener the order is:

1. 1Backwash. Water flows up through the resin bed and out the drain, loosening trapped grit.
2. 2Brine draw and slow rinse. Brine is pulled from the salt tank and slowly pushed through the resin, which recharges it.
3. 3Rapid rinse. Fresh water flushes the brine out of the resin.
4. 4Brine refill. The salt tank refills with water to make brine for the next regeneration.
5. 5Back in service.

Pentair notes the order can change on a filter or an upflow unit. Each step has its own time, set in master programming from 0 to 199 minutes, and a step set to 0 is skipped. So the total time depends on your settings, and there's no one number that fits every Fleck. Your programmed step times, added up, tell you what to expect. If you need to check them, see how to program a Fleck 5600SXT.

The step-by-step method is also how you test a valve. After a repair, walk the valve through every step and watch the drain line and the brine tank at each one. For example, you want to see the brine tank level fall in step two and rise in step four. If step two doesn't pull brine, see why a Fleck 5600SXT isn't drawing brine.

### What controls how much salt a regeneration uses?

Two things: how long the brine draw step runs, and how fast brine moves. The speed comes from the brine line flow controller. Pentair's parts list rates them from 0.125 gpm, which corresponds to 0.375 pounds of salt per minute, up to 1.0 gpm, which corresponds to 3 pounds per minute. So a longer brine draw step or a bigger controller means more salt used. If you see the troubleshooting entry "unit used too much salt," the manual's fix is to check salt usage and the salt setting.

### How can you tell it worked?

Watch three things. First, the drain line should run steadily during backwash and run clear by the end of rapid rinse, which is how Pentair's start-up procedure describes it. Second, the brine tank level should drop during brine draw and rise again during refill. Third, once the hot water tank has cycled through, a test strip on a cold tap should show soft water. If the brine level never moves, don't keep regenerating. Fix the draw problem first.

A short press of Extra Cycle, not a hold, queues a regeneration. The service icon flashes to show it's waiting, and it runs at your programmed regeneration time. Press Extra Cycle again to cancel it. If a regeneration happens for any other reason before that time, the queued request is cleared. Nothing else needs to be done.

Queuing beats a hold whenever the household is up and using water, because a regeneration in progress can leave taps without treated water for the duration of the cycle. Queuing is the gentler choice when you'd rather not lose soft water in the middle of the day. It's also what you'd use if you just topped off the salt and want the softener to catch up overnight.

A power failure won't wreck anything. The SXT keeps time and counts days for at least 8 hours without power, stores your settings permanently, and flashes the time of day after an outage until you press any button. Pentair notes that power interruptions longer than 8 hours may make the controller lose the time setting, and then you must re-enter it.

If power fails in the middle of a regeneration, the control saves the valve position and picks up from that point when power returns. It won't start a new regeneration without power. A missed one is queued and usually runs about a day late. Because a valve can sit in its current position through an outage, Pentair says the system should include the safety components that prevent overflows. That's one reason the drain line air gap matters.

If you rely on treated water and your power drops out often, a larger reserve capacity helps cover the delay. Pentair says exactly that.

Good reasons: you've just filled an empty salt tank, cleaned the injector or screen, finished a repair, or come home from a long trip and want the resin fresh. Also try one if the water suddenly feels hard, after you confirm the bypass valve is closed and there's salt in the tank.

Give it time afterward. Pentair lists "hot water tank hardness" as a reason water still tests hard, and repeated flushing of the hot water tank is the fix. Soft water only reaches the taps once the water heater has drawn down and refilled.

It's a red flag if you need manual regenerations every few days. Something is off with the settings or the hardware. The usual suspects are a hardness number that's too low, a meter that isn't counting, or an error code. Check what the Fleck 5600SXT error codes mean and, if the softener won't behave, why a water softener stops working.

One last reminder from the manual: do not use granulated or rock salt in the brine tank. Leaks add to the load too. The EPA says the average household leaks more than 9,300 gallons a year, and every gallon that runs through a leaky toilet or faucet uses up softener capacity. HQ Plumbing & Air gives free estimates and upfront pricing on softener service and leak repair.