One of the best parts of the Clack WS1 Iron & Sulphur Water Filter system is that it’s very low maintenance. However, you may have to reprogram it.
Maybe you've recently replaced the circuit board, or maybe you just want to make sure that your current settings are correct. In either case, it’s easier than you think!
Today, we’re going to take you step-by-step through programming the best settings for your iron and sulphur filter and show you how easy it is to program it.
Most importantly, we’re going to go through all the settings that you don't want to touch. We definitely encourage you to read the whole blog, because we are also going to add a tip to help you ensure your iron sulphur filter lasts a long time.
Clack WS1 Iron & Sulphur Water Filter Programming
The first thing you might find is that your valve is locked, which will prevent you from doing any programming. Typically, we don't lock our valves, but some other companies do.
To unlock it, you’re just going to press Down, Next, Up, and Set Clock in that order. That should unlock it. And, if you would like to lock it, it’s that same sequence of buttons.
Let's begin by looking at what each button does.
- Set Clock is pretty straightforward. You press it and the hours flash. Now, you can move the arrow up or move it down to set the current time. Just be careful. The AM/PM indicator is in the top right-hand corner and it's a little difficult to see.
- Next takes you to the next page of the programming that you’re working on.
- The Regen button. If you click at once, it'll regenerate at the next scheduled regeneration time, which is typically 2 or 3 am. Press it again and it deletes that initiated regeneration. If you want it to create a regeneration right now, hold it down for 5 seconds.
- Up and Down allow you to change the value that is showing on screen for the programming.
The first thing we're going to do is we're going to push the Next and the Down buttons at the same time and hold them down until the screen changes. In the top left-hand corner, it should be saying Softening. We need to change that with the Down arrow or Up arrow to Filtering because we need to tell your valve that this unit is being used for an iron and sulphur filter. Now, we press Next and you keep pressing next until you get back to the current time, which is the end.
Next, we're going to do the same thing, except we're going to do it twice. Hold Next and Down until the screen changes, and then do it again until the screen changes.
We’re doing this so we can tell the unit what size valve this is. It’s safe to say that, 99% of the time, it’s a 1.0 or a one-inch valve. If it's a commercial application or an extremely large plumbed home, you might be 1 ¼ or 1 ½. This screen is where you would change this. But you probably don’t need to, so we press Next. But it’s good to confirm that you’re programmed correctly.
Next, you will see Alt off. Why? Because these are industrial valves scaled down for residential use, which means they can do a lot of other things that we're not going to use them for. If you had two valves set up, this is where you would change your settings. But you probably don’t, so we will leave it as-is.
Press Next and you will see DPI off, and that's the correct setting. That's for a dip switch that can be connected.
Next, we’re going to look at the cycles. This screen is telling us what cycles we're going to build into your valve and it helps us ensure that the cycles are correct. The first cycle is Backwash. You should see a 1 and then you'll see the word Backwash flashing. If you wanted to change that, you would use the arrow Down or Up button, but we don’t want that. We want to have 1 Backwash and then press Next.
The next prompt should say 2 Dn Brine. Again, that's what we want to have here. If there's something else set up (like Rinse or something like that), then you need to change it.
After that, we press Next and it says 3 Backwash. This is something we want to change. An air over media iron sulphur filter only has two cycles. First, it has the Backwash cycle, which is the initial one. Then it has (what it calls here) Down Brine. It's actually not Down Brine, it's air draw. But in terms of this unit’s terminology, it uses Down Brine. We need to change this to Off or End. After that, we click Next.
We're back to the current time. Next, we want to go into System Set Up. To do that, we press Next and Down and hold them together. Now, it's showing Filtering. That's correct, so we press Next again. Now we see the first cycle. An air over media iron and sulphur filter’s default is 15 minutes. You will probably see it flash 8, so we just press the Up arrow to get to the number 15 and then press Next.
For Down Brine, we want to change this to 30 minutes. The default setting may be 60, so we press the Down arrow until we land on 30. Press Next again and you should see Off again.
Now, we’re going to get into the Installer Settings. Press the Next and the Up buttons together and hold them until the screen changes. You should see Regen Day 14, which is how often your unit is going to regenerate or do the air draw. This needs to happen every 3 days for an air over media iron and sulphur filter, so press Down until you get to the number 3 and then press Next.
Now you can see the Regen time, which is the time of day when your unit goes through that cycle. The biggest concern here is you don’t want to schedule it for the same time as the water softener (or any other water filtration equipment) if you have one. You have to stagger the times. Water softeners are usually set for 2 am. We usually like to set the filter for 1 am or 4 am, depending on how long the softener’s cycle is. Hit Next again.
If you have an extended power failure of roughly 45 minutes or longer, you will probably have to reset the time.
There are a couple of normal operating screens when you're in Service Mode. From the current time, you can press Next to see the Flow. We don't connect a flow meter to these air over media iron and sulphur filters, so that number should always be 00.
If you press Next, it tells you the number of days remaining before it needs to regenerate to fulfill its 3-day cycle.
And you’re done!
Check our Iron & Sulphur Filter Programming YouTube video here 
Shop our HUM Iron & Sulphur Filters here https://waterestore.ca/search?type=product&q=hum*%20fob*
Bonus Tip
One of the ways you can make sure your iron and sulphur filter system (and any other equipment) lasts a long time is to get a surge suppressor and get a good one.
To be clear, we don't mean a power bar. We mean an actual surge suppressor. If there's a voltage fluctuation or a brownout (or something like that) the surge suppressor will take the brunt of that. It will save your electronics.