How to Install an Acid Neutralizer for Well Water (Complete Guide)

Caller "I just received my shipment. I looked in the boxes. I didn't have any instructions or directions what to do."

Aidan "The manufacturers don't include instructions. They figure most people have a plumber install it. You got 5 bags of calcite with it. The connections are 1 inch male thread, so if you have 3/4 you reduce down with a female adapter and a bushing."

That was a New York caller two weeks ago with a 2.5 cubic foot tank on his basement floor and 3/4 inch copper on the wall. There is no paper in the box; this page is the instructions, and the photo is what the finished job looks like in one buyer's basement.

What is in the boxes

Everything but the pipe and fittings comes in the boxes. Your plumber brings the pipe, the fittings and a shutoff valve for your kind of plumbing. No fittings are included because every basement is plumbed differently.

Everything on the right is at Lowe's, Home Depot or a plumbing supply house. Two buyers wrote that the fittings were hard to find locally, so check the 1 inch female adapters before the day of the install.

Where the acid neutralizer goes

The tank goes on the main water line right after the pressure tank, with a sediment filter ahead of it and before any water softener. You want to catch all the water before it splits off to the house, so find where the main line leaves the pressure tank first. A South Carolina caller this summer ordered before he found it and had to get a plumber out just to locate where the water entered the house.

Sediment filter first. A 20 inch Big Blue with a 5 micron cartridge goes between the well tank and the neutralizer, so grit never reaches the valve or the calcite. If you already have a sediment filter, keep it and put the neutralizer after it.

Softener after. Calcite adds a little hardness, so a softener always comes after the neutralizer, never before. One buyer's plumber put them in backwards, and the buyer swapped them himself.

How to install an acid neutralizer

A plumber finishes a standard basement install in about 2 hours. If a plumber is doing it, the steps are for him and you can stop at the one rule in step 7. Here is the install from beginning to end. I filmed the whole thing on a mockup in our shop, in CPVC, which is how we did our installs in Maryland; the same steps apply in PEX or copper. Decide what type of pipe and fitting you will use to connect the neutralizer to your water supply. CPVC with one-step cement is the cheapest. PEX with a crimp or press tool works. If you are tying into copper, a SharkBite coupling saves soldering. Whatever you choose, cut out any copper between the well tank and the neutralizer: untreated water is still corroding it.

Twelve minutes, the whole install on camera: the fittings, taping the adapter, the upflow inlet, filling the tank and the quarter-turn rule. The step photos below are frames from it. One correction: in the video I say about 18 months to the first calcite refill. That is the 1.5 cubic foot tank's number; the 2.5 cubic foot tank I am installing runs 30 to 36 months between bags.

1. Find a spot for the tank

   Locate a spot next to your well tank where you plan on installing your acid neutralizer. Most basement floors are not level, so lift the tank and tap the edge of the black boot on the bottom against the floor until the tank stands straight; the tank is designed to move in the boot. Leave an inch and a half to two inches between the tank and the wall so you can get pipe behind it. Put a level on the head once the pipe is on.

   

2. Turn off the water

   Turn off the water supply before you cut into the plumbing. If there is already a shutoff valve after the well tank, close it and open a cold water faucet to relieve the pressure. If there is no valve, shut off the well pump at the breaker and open a faucet until the flow stops. Once the water stops, grab a 5 gallon bucket and your pipe cutters and remove a section of pipe after the well tank.

   

3. Connect at the well tank

   Start at the well tank tee with a 3/4 inch male adapter. Put six to eight wraps of Teflon tape on the threads, start it by hand, get it as tight as you can by hand, then finish it with the channel locks until it is snug. Do not keep going; you can crack the fitting. Put your ball valve in line right after it. This is the valve you will use to fill the tank slowly and to shut the water off for every refill. Glue each fitting as you go: a little cement on the pipe, a little on the fitting, push together and give it a turn. One-step CPVC cement is ready for water in about 10 minutes, but I give the whole job 20 to 30 minutes before I pressurize it.

   

4. Connect the pipe coming into the tank

   Water has to come in on the head's upflow port; it is marked on the head, and one buyer took a star off because he almost got it backwards. Upflow means the water goes down the center tube, out through the plate at the bottom and up through the calcite, and that rinses the bed every time you use water.

   The connections on the head are 1 inch male thread. Screw a 1 inch CPVC female adapter onto each one; there is an O-ring (a rubber ring) inside, so hand tight only, no wrench. If your pipe is 3/4, glue a 1 by 3/4 reducer into the adapter. I use plastic adapters instead of brass so nobody cross-threads the head, and they swivel, so you can face them whichever way makes the run easier. Run your pipe from the ball valve to the upflow port.

   

5. Connect the pipe going to the house

   Off the outlet side, a 4 inch stub and an elbow (a 90), then run it back to where you cut the main house line and connect. If the house line is copper, a SharkBite push fitting joins the plastic to the copper without soldering. One buyer in Virginia used 18 inch flexible connectors at the head so there is no strain on the plastic elbows. I line every fitting up dry before I glue it, because CPVC pulls apart until it is cemented.

   

6. Load the calcite

   The Vortech tank takes no gravel; the plate at the bottom does that job. With the head off, put a piece of painter's tape over the open center tube so nothing falls in it, set the wide fill funnel in the tank opening, and pour the bags in. It is the least fun part of the job, and the funnel speeds it up by about 70 percent. The five bags fill the 2.5 cubic foot tank to about 10 to 12 inches below the fill port. If your order came with FloMag, mix it into each bag in a storage bin before you pour: 2 to 3 pounds per bag is the standard, 3 or 4 near pH 5, and the FloMag page has the details. Save the rest for refills. One buyer marked the outside of the tank at the level of the last bag so he would know where it started; I like that.

   

7. Fill the tank slowly

   With a cold water faucet open and the bypass in the service position, slowly open your water supply valve a 1/4 of the way and slowly fill the neutralizer tank. The service position means the bypass handles are turned so water goes through the tank, not around it. A sudden rush shifts the calcite. Keep the fill cap on but loose. As the tank fills from the bottom, you will hear air hissing out around the cap, and when water starts to squirt out, hand tighten the cap. Then take the channel locks and give it a quarter to a half turn. That is it. Once the water starts to flow from the cold water faucet, slowly open the supply valve the rest of the way.

   

8. Flush for 10 to 15 minutes

   Let the cold water run 10 to 15 minutes until it runs clear. The water comes out milky white at first. That is calcite dust from the bags, it is harmless, and it rinses out; in warm weather I run an outside spigot instead of a faucet so the dust is not going through the house. While it runs, check every joint and the head connections for drips. One buyer put a hose spigot and a shutoff valve right after his tank so he could flush the dust straight to a bucket; you do not need it, but it is a clean way to do it.

   

9. Retest the water after a few days

   After the neutralizer has run for a few days, test the pH again. A hardware-store strip or a pH meter tells you whether the water is neutral today; that is fine for this check. The number I want you to keep is a lab number, so if you sized the tank from a strip and never had a lab test, the certified well water test reports pH, hardness, copper and lead from one sample, and it tells you whether the hardness the calcite adds is enough to want a softener. If the pH is still low after a week, call me before you change anything.

If you bought a backwashing tank (Fleck 2510SXT or 5600SXT on top), two things are added to the list. Run 1/2 inch drain tubing from the drain port on the valve to a floor drain, a laundry standpipe or a utility sink within 20 feet, with an air gap, and tie it down; the backwash comes out hard. Plug the transformer into an outlet within 6 feet. After the tank is full, run a manual backwash to settle the bed and purge the air, and check the drain connection while it runs. If the drain has to go outside, cut the pipe through the wall at an angle so it drains and does not hold water in the winter.

Two ways the tank gets damaged

Leaks on these tanks come from two things: a fill cap tightened too far, or an O-ring that pinched. The fill cap, the head and the adapters all seal on a rubber O-ring, and a rubber ring seals with hand pressure. Hand tight, then a quarter to a half turn with the channel locks, the same rule as step 7. If you keep going on the fill cap you split the lip of the tank, and a split tank is not covered by the warranty.

If a connection does drip, the fix is not more force. Shut the water off and let the pressure out at a faucet, take the fitting off, and look at the O-ring. Check that it is not torn and that it did not bind or roll when you tightened it. Put a little plumber's grease on it, or vegetable oil if that is what you have, and put it back on hand tight. A Louisiana caller in January had a drip where the bypass meets the head two weeks after his install with everything hand tight; the O-ring had bound up, and that was the fix. If it is torn, the O-ring is a Clack part and I can have one sent to you. One buyer this month found the gasket on his female adapter never reached the male threads; he took it off, taped the threads and it sealed.

Do I need a plumber?

We ship it and your plumber installs it. Any licensed plumber can do this job, and I am on the phone if he has a question. There is nothing special about the plumbing; it is an inlet and an outlet off your well tank, in whatever pipe your house already has. Plumbers have the fittings on the truck. I spent 28 years in the field before we became a distributor, and plumbers who are putting these in for other people call me every week, so your plumber will not be the first.

What a plumber charges is up to him. Here in Maryland I hear a thousand dollars and up for a neutralizer in a basement, which is about a 2 hour job; a Maryland caller in July had a contractor quote $1,200 to build an outdoor enclosure and replumb everything, and I told him to sign the man up, because that is cheap. The acid neutralizer cost page has the numbers my customers report from around the country.

Nobody sends a piping diagram with the tank, because no two basements are the same and a drawing of one basement confuses people in another. If you are handy and doing it yourself, I have coached homeowners through multi-tank installs over the phone who had never touched a piece of pipe, and the pictures they send afterward look fine. Either way, the number is the same.

Boxes on the floor and a question?

Send me a photo of your setup

A picture of the well tank and where the pipe leaves it is usually all I need to tell you or your plumber where the tank goes and what fittings to get.

Text Aidan443-277-2204 Call800-460-5810Aidan

8 AM to 5 PM Eastern, seven days a week. A real person, not a call center.

What buyers said after installing

Every reviewer below is a verified purchase through our store. Reviewer names appear as the buyers wrote them.

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