Softener stays in compartment

[dlevy007]

My Huebsch 20lb washers are 6 years old and I'm having a problem with softener staying in the compartment #3 and net getting siphoned over into compartment #2. I've cleaned out the siphon and even changed the hot water mixing valve. The issue seems to be that not enough water is getting into that compartment #3 to create enough volume to get a strong siphon going. Any suggestions?

[Adamski]

dlevy007,

The water flow into compartment #3 is quite slow ... not nearly as fast as the flow into compartments #1 and #2. When the water flows into #3, it should overflow the compartment through the cutout in the wall and then flow into #2. Once the water level is high enough to overflow, the siphon tube is full of water and should be siphoning the water out at the same time it is overflowing. Then the water shuts off and the overflowing stops but the siphoning will continue until the bottom of the siphon tube becomes uncovered. At this point, #3 will be almost empty.

If the sipon tube is not siphoning as above, and it's not plugged up; make sure the longer tube is in #2 and the shorter tube is in #3. If it's backwards, it won't work.

If the compartment is not overflowing for a few seconds, the siphon cannot begin. If you don't see a good overflow, your inlet valve for #3 may be dirty or defective.

[MrMachine]

It could also be that your cold water diaphragm is dirty or worn out causing an insufficient flow of water. Or you may have clogged hose screens. In other words, the cold water flow may not be strong enough to get past the anti-siphon break to the 3rd compartment.

You can verify this by watching the cold water flow in the first compartment.
If it looks kind of slow then that's the problem.

The fix is to simply change your cold water diaphragm, or clean the hose screens.

[N BROWN]

I believe the longer tube goes into the softener compartment and these machines use hot water to flush the softener compartment.

[MrMachine]

Oops sorry. I wasn't paying attention. You already changed your mixing valve.

[N BROWN]

First check the elbow at the back of the soap box. Sometimes they clog up and slow up flow. If that is clear the only other thing is the vacuum break, You can check it by removing the hoses and and temporarily bypassing the vacuum break. You can get a coupling at the Auto Parts store. Be very careful removing the hoses it is very easy to break the nipples off the vacuum break. If you find it is the vacuum break you can often clean them by running a small piece of wire or a drillbit through the holes. If you have never had one apart, the inside of the vacuum breaker looks like two nozzles pointing at each other. So on the softener they are pretty small and scale can easily clog them.