How to Program a Clack WS1 Water Softener

Before you touch a button

Write down every value the valve currently holds before you change anything. Step through the existing settings with a pen in hand so you have a known-good starting point to roll back to if a new number causes trouble. Just as important: keep the configuration sheet or manual that shipped with your softener. The WS1 firmware has gone through several revisions, and the exact order of screens, the on-screen labels, and which settings even appear depend on your firmware version and how the valve was configured at the factory. Treat the sequence below as the general flow, not a screen-by-screen script, and let your own configuration sheet settle any disagreement.

Set the clock first

The time of day is set separately from Master Programming, and it matters — a metered valve still needs the correct clock so it regenerates at the hour you intend. Press the SET CLOCK button, set the hours with the Up (▲) and Down (▼) arrows, press SET CLOCK again to move to minutes, set those, and press SET CLOCK once more to finish. Because this is independent of the programming menu, you can correct the time after a power outage without re-entering any of your softener settings.

Getting into Master Programming

From the normal time-of-day display, press NEXT and the Down (▼) button together for 3 seconds and release. Then press NEXT and Down (▼) together again for another 3 seconds to actually enter Master Programming. Once inside, the button roles are consistent: press NEXT to advance to the next setting, REGEN to step back to the previous one, and the Up/Down arrows to change the value that's showing. When you've reviewed everything, pressing NEXT past the final screen saves your changes and returns the valve to the normal display.

The settings you'll step through

Here is the general sequence. Again, the precise order and the wording of each label vary by firmware, so match these to what your screen actually shows:

1. Display format / units. Choose gallons for a U.S. system so the rest of the numbers make sense.
2. Regeneration / valve type. For a standard residential softener this is downflow — the ordinary single-backwash configuration.
3. System capacity or hardness setup. Depending on how the valve is configured, you'll either enter a system capacity in grains or work through a hardness-based setup. See the note below on letting the valve do the math.
4. Water hardness in grains per gallon. Enter compensated hardness — add 5 GPG for every 1 PPM of dissolved iron in your water, since iron consumes softening capacity just as hardness minerals do.
5. Day override. The maximum number of days the valve will let pass between regenerations regardless of water use. Something in the 7–14 day range is common, keeping the resin bed fresh even during a low-usage week.
6. Regeneration time. Set this to a low-demand hour so soft water is restored by morning; 2:00 AM is the usual choice.

Setting the cycle steps

After the main settings, the WS1 walks you through the individual stages of a regeneration and how long each one runs. For a typical residential softener these land close to:

1. Backwash — around 10 minutes. Water flows up through the bed to lift and rinse out accumulated sediment.
2. Brine draw and slow rinse — around 60 minutes. The valve pulls brine from the tank through the injector and slowly rinses it through the resin, which is where the actual regeneration happens.
3. Rapid rinse — around 10 minutes. A faster flush that clears the last of the brine before the tank returns to service.
4. Brine refill / fill — a number of minutes sized to your resin volume. This adds water to the brine tank to dissolve salt for the next regeneration, so a larger tank needs a longer fill.

Let the valve calculate the gallons

A convenient way to run a WS1 is to enter your system capacity in grains and your hardness, and let the valve calculate the gallons between regenerations for you. Because it's a metered valve, it then counts down actual water use and regenerates only when the resin is genuinely near exhaustion — which uses less salt and water than a fixed calendar schedule. For this to work, confirm the flow meter is actually registering water use: run a tap and watch the display tick over. If the meter never moves, the valve will fall back to the day override and you'll lose the efficiency of metering. Our calculator produces the hardness, capacity, reserve, and cycle numbers to plug in here, and the water hardness guide covers finding your hardness and converting PPM to GPG.

Test before you walk away

Once your values are saved, prove them out with a manual regeneration: press and hold REGEN. Watch the brine tank draw down as the valve pulls brine, then confirm it refills during the fill step. Seeing the water level fall and rise verifies that the injector, drain line, and brine valve are all working together — the components most likely to clog or stick. If the level doesn't move, you've caught the problem now rather than discovering hard water weeks later.

Related guides

To reach the settings menu on other valves, see the programming guide for Fleck, GE, and Whirlpool models. Once your WS1 is dialed in, the maintenance schedule keeps it running for years, and the troubleshooting guide helps if something stops working as expected.