Best Practices for Piping & Drain Installation
1. The filter is installed after the pressure tank on well water systems. See Fig. 1 Usually you do not want to
water the garden or irrigate your landscaping with treated water. This will require more salt than usual to be
used and in some cases the sodium can build‐up in the soil causing some problems to sensitive plants. It is often
not difficult to re plumb so you can run untreated water to the irrigation and outside hose bibs thereby
bypassing the filter.
2. Make sure to connect the inlet pipe to the WS1 filter inlet and the outlet to the outlet. You can see the in and
out arrows on the back of the control valve where the bypass is connected.
3. Make sure there is a working gate or ball valve before the filter and also one after as shown in the diagram. If
you are installing multiple filter systems you do not need a valve in between each system. A hose bib (which is a
faucet that you can attach a garden hose to) is strongly recommended after the tannin filter before the second
ball valve. This makes it easy to test the water before it enters your household plumbing.
4. If you will be using copper piping, do not sweat the copper pipe directly to the plastic bypass
valve. Avoid heating up the bypass valve with the torch.
5. You do not need unions to install your filter. If you need to remove it, the WS1 controller has union couplings
on the bypass valve that make it easy to put the filter on bypass and remove the filter system from the piping.
6. The drain line tubing (not supplied) is connected to a drain from the drain outlet using flexible ½” ID tubing.
Note that the drain can run up above the WS1 filter and into a drain, it does not have to drain down, as the filter
backwashes under line pressure from your well pump. If the drain line will be more than 20 feet, use larger
diameter tubing such as ¾” or 1”. Plumbing codes require an air‐gap connection, so that if your sewer or septic
tank backs up, it cannot cross connect with the drain tubing. Note that it is desirable to be able to run the drain
line into a bucket in order to test the backwash flow rate in the future. This is why hard piping the drain line is
discouraged, however, if you do use hard PVC piping for the drain line, and you are able to remove the hard PVC
drain piping and attach flexible tubing should you ever desire for testing purposes, it is OK to use rigid PVC pipe
for the drain. Make sure the drain tubing is firmly clamped to the barbed fitting with a hose clamp to prevent
leaks.
7. Connect the controller to the brine tank with the 3/8” tubing supplied in the brine tank. Note that the over‐
flow fitting on the side of the brine tank does not need to be connected, unless the filter is installed in a closet or
somewhere where overflowing salt water could cause a problem. Water rarely overflows the brine tank
however.
8. Add 3 – 5 bags of salt (40 – 50lbs each). You do not have to add water to the brine tank again after this first
time during the start‐up. The controller fills it automatically during the regeneration.
Summary of Contents for Clack WS1
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