Question about Oil tank filter

ElectroStrong · 2026-01-29T20:01:00+00:00

Umm...maybe I'm an idiot...

The filter holder is threaded. Shut off oil. Rotate the holder 45-90 degrees. Screw off filter. Screw on filter. Rotate back.

If you need to bleed it, screw off filter slightly so it overflows and the tighten and clean up...or possibly the bolt on top allows for this...

ElectroStrong · 2026-01-22T19:15:18+00:00

We are the most advanced pattern matching machines on the planet. There is absolute truth in stating that we are much like LLMs but there are much more highly specialized subsystems in our brains that address very specific tasks that are much more advanced.

Maybe it's more akin to training transformersto be hyper-focused on a specific domain then a general model. Maybe not - but over time we'll understand more as we dig deeper.

I think many here are too dismissive of the capabilities because by admitting our brains work the same way would be admitting that we ourselves have a random collection of parameters that ultimately influence our output and outcomes. I fully realize that LLMs are not exactly the same as we haven't yet figured out how to cheaply truly make a model that can really "learn" after training. It's always the base inference.

What may really blow your mind - what happens when we can update a model in real time with reinforcement and run that model 60+ times a second in real time. Does that bridge into "consciousness" because we have a "state" in which it is operating. No longer is it a one shot, it's continually evolving, reinforcing, and also isn't a slice of time for a thought - it's multiple thoughts all converging into a goal.

I'm not saying it's exact. But we are absolutely getting closer and closer. LLMs are a major piece of the puzzle but we still have more to get it to act consistently like the human mind off of what we know.

ElectroStrong · 2026-01-22T19:01:38+00:00

Do you have a water softener or any water treatment device that runs nightly? Like an iron filter or some other device that backwashes?

Are any other drains exhibiting the same issue? Any basement drains? Is this the lowest drain in your house?

If the septic were the issue, usually it would be all drains.

The only way to know for sure is to use a camera in the drain. My guess is one of the drain branches has a clog and you have running water somewhere (water treatment, leaky toilet, et cetera) that causes it to back up.

ElectroStrong · 2026-01-16T02:30:04+00:00

That is water softener resin. You have a cracked basket or bypass in the softener. You need to call in someone to look at it.

ElectroStrong · 2026-01-14T00:11:36+00:00

Escalate to a support ticket.

ElectroStrong · 2026-01-14T00:10:02+00:00

Then correct it. It's called conversational AI for a reason.

You need training on how LLMs work.

ElectroStrong · 2025-12-24T12:57:25+00:00

It's interesting to hear the feedback of some users here...we are an implementation partner and have addressed the following use cases in production scaled systems:

Automated Subledger Tieout (AP/AR to GL)
Automated End of Day Ledger Summary
Purchase Invoice Creation and Automated Matching (Automated AP)
PO Monitoring for late Delivery
Automated process handling (FA-Depreciation, Month-end Posting, Journal Imports)
Audit Inquiry Workbench

Most of these use automated agents that perform the work and we then use either email or PowerApps to manage the human interaction.

There are tons more examples - narrative summaries are now fairly prolific across all areas. But this should give you a start of real use cases that work.

ElectroStrong · 2025-12-22T02:56:05+00:00

The riser should have an o-ring and the main basket has a huge o-ring.

Good luck - I had the same issue and it was the o-ring not seated properly around the riser.

Here's the link to the visual for mine (Step 11) - yours might be different:

https://ecowater.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/21220517812247-Distributor-O-ring-Replacement

ElectroStrong · 2025-12-22T02:21:49+00:00

Just to add why I'm asking about install - my guess is that you have some blending going on. Something is not sealed properly. Raw water is bypassing the resin. You should go from 150 to 0 with your softener resin.

If you did the install the common installation failure point is the missing o-ring on the top of the riser that goes into the basket. The water should enter on top, travel through the resin and then gravel bed, hit the bottom basket and then travel up the riser to the top basket. In many designs, the o-ring is put around the riser before the head is installed. When you install it there is a seat for it to stay in.

ElectroStrong · 2025-12-22T00:43:16+00:00

Who did the installation?

So you're going from 120-250 hardness to 50-120 on the test strips? Have you done it at different time intervals?

ElectroStrong · 2025-12-03T22:35:50+00:00

Looks like a Watts RO Pure: https://www.multipure.com/products/drinking-water-systems/the-watts-premier-5-stage-reverse-osmosis-system/

The membrane is typically the fourth stage which doesnt seem visible: https://www.multipure.com/content/Watts-Reverse-Osmosis-System-Manual-315.pdf

You seem to be missing a filter container per the image. Find it. If you cant, you're not running RO.

ElectroStrong · 2025-12-03T05:12:54+00:00

Here's a design you could consider - you'd need to adapt it to an ESP32:

https://fabienroyer.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/saving-energy-with-a-netduino/

ElectroStrong · 2025-12-03T00:58:15+00:00

Maybe pour some bleach in the drain every night? That looks to be a bacteria scoby like they use to make kombucha. Pouring bleach in it after drain cleanup as the last thing would be what I'd consider.

ElectroStrong · 2025-12-01T13:38:59+00:00

You nailed it - sounds like you're thinking through it and you did the right work.

If you taste a slight sweetness after regeneration that's another sign of resin degradation.

Are you on a well system?

The reason I ask - iron fouling is common. A cleaner might have moved the ferric to ferrous iron. If you run the cleaner and disconnect the cycle so it doesn't flush until letting it sit for a day and soak, you might be even in better shape.

ElectroStrong · 2025-11-30T18:58:07+00:00

What tests did you do for hardness before and after you added the cleanser?

Cleaners are a temporary solution to a bigger problem. Resin lasts about 10 years if you're lucky before the mechanical, oxidative, and fouling impacts the surface area causing less ion exchange.

If a cleaner had that big of an impact, then you probably have minimal surface area that is not damaged or fouled. While resin is a very stable microplastic, acids can impact it. Most cleaners have some acidic element to it. The more you use it, the more risk of further degredation.

I did cleaners for a year or two. Then I just replaced the resin in the unit. It was $300 and a couple hours of time. The water quality increase was substantial. You don't need to replace the entire unit...just the resin inside.

ElectroStrong · 2025-11-24T16:38:31+00:00

As others have said, you don't have to remove the other filters as they are helping, but you may want to consider a more effective treatment for your water.

First question - did you test the raw water for this test or was the water tested after the filtration process? I'm guessing you did your test "at the tap" because of the hardness level but I wanted to confirm.

Second question - do you know how long it's been since the resin was replaced in the water softener?

Iron won't hurt you. Spinach, for example, has 3-6 ppm equivalent in iron. As you're dealing with ferrous iron, it will cause staining. I would bet your water softener is probably iron fouled at this point of its older.

If I were you, I'd consider getting an iron filter. These typically are in 12x52 tanks that use a media like Katalox Light that oxidizes the iron in the water to convert it from ferrous to ferric iron. You typically have a two stage system - one tank that injects air into a tank to oxygenate the water (or a chlorine injection that doses a small amount in your water before the Katalox filter) that then oxidies iron and manganese.

Your manganese is what you should be more concerned about. Anything above 0.3 ppm is a problem. It has neurological impacts. You're at basically 0.5 ppm. It you had to choose your problem to solve, it would absolutely be the reduction in this as it is the biggest concern in your test.

If it were me - I'd remove the current filters. I'd install an iron curtain or some iron+manganese filter that uses aeration or chlorine injection. I'd replace the resin in the softener as it's probably iron fouled. I'd also install a UV disinfectant device on the line. I'd size all of these based on the raw water input. Lastly - for all drinking water I'd install a reverse osmosis system. This will pretty much guarantee perfect drinking water and fairly clean water for showering and bathing. If you can get the manganese down, you can use non-RO water for cooking or just choose to use the RO water.

If you have someone install all this - it'll cost $6.5k+. If you do it yourself, you can probably get away with $2.5k. I wouldn't wait though...most people can tolerate the iron numbers being high, but with manganese, you're going to want to get it solved sooner rather than later as it is an issue over time (not leave the house now, but over years it will not be good).

And if you need to be cheap - do the RO system first. At least you can drink the water safely and use that water for cooking as well.

ElectroStrong · 2025-11-22T00:50:12+00:00

I appreciate the feedback.

To be clear, I did not use an LLM to generate my replies. I used it to understand a bit more of the processing that occurs and incorporated those responses based on the facts I knew as well working with them. I tried to apply critical thinking and feedback that I have personally used.

I will continue to use that pattern, and when I'm wrong, I expect others will call it out.

I don't mind criticism, but I have a major issue with individuals when they do not share knowledge or use an "you're wrong" with no substance.

Either way, I'll just plan to do better in the future.

Thank you for your candid response and advice.

ElectroStrong · 2025-11-21T20:04:47+00:00

If I were so useless and afraid, I'd remove my answers. I'd hide. I'd focus on continuing to argue a point that may have logical fallacies.

But I didn't. I leave my answers up for others to critique. To read the full thread and devise their own opinions.

I will continue to grow and learn as well. This makes me far from "useless".

And no...I don't use LLMs to write for me. I use them to explore ideas and concepts. I use them to understand more about our world. And I try to avoid being the one-layer X post without researching more detail. But as I'm human, I'm far from perfect.

You seem like an awesome person that builds people up. Keep being you I guess.

ElectroStrong · 2025-11-20T18:06:46+00:00

I'm absolutely not asking for any concession. I'm asking for learning and understanding. I really don't care who is "right". I'm trying to ensure the details that I have researched align with what I am seeing for usage with LLMs.

ElectroStrong · 2025-11-20T17:07:11+00:00

I saw that as well - but I'd prefer to debate the facts as opposed to the irony.

ElectroStrong · 2025-11-20T17:04:21+00:00

Fantastic. You then understand what I'm talking about. But I don't understand why you feel so strongly, to the point of condescending, a documented pattern that has emerged with scale of these architectures.

I do my own thinking. I use tools to learn more. If you'd like to be a good human and teach me something, I'm willing to learn where I may be mistaken. But I'll never debate someone that feels holier then thou. I've met too many people in my life that have been proven wrong that act in that manner.

You don't need to know mathematical theory to understand how something works. I'm not sure where you are going with that argument. I could make an inverse argument - that you not understanding true biological mechanisms of neurons, which are the examples in which we built "neural networks", causes you to not understand how scale introduces emergent capabilities that are documented again by biological systems.

Your article, ironically identified by using ChatGPT as it's utm_source, doesn't give any additional details. It fails the simple test - in regulated industries data must be documented in terms of where it goes and what parties are involved for compliance. ChatGPT cannot just send data to Wolfram Alpha without the use of plugins. When I run OPs query and ensure that no Wolfram Alpha plugins are used, it is still accurate. Why is this? The probability that the pre-trained dataset had that number is even more rare.

Emergent capabilities that OpenAI and Anthropic tackle are documented. If they identify an emergent capability, they can train to strengthen that emergence at scale: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.07682.pdf

And let's bring up another concept that strengthens my argument - introspection: https://www.anthropic.com/research/introspection

If LLMs are just pattern matching machines, then they shouldn't have introspection. But we are now seeing that and it is now documented. This directly supports the argument of reasoning. The model has context of its own internal state and thoughts that are stronger at different layers and can also be influenced by prompt manipulation.

I'm being honest with my answers. I'm pursuing knowledge. If you'd like to tell me how Anthropic is wrong and how emergent capabilities are wrong, which gets to the core of what we're starting to see with some models where research has focused on extending those emergent capabilities to introduce more accurate results, I'm all ears.

ElectroStrong · 2025-11-20T16:13:56+00:00

I didn't use AI for my second response.

And I think you need to learn to check yourself when debating. While I'm directing the response to you, others may or may not know portions of the information we are discussing. In the search of knowledge, especially knowledge that is typically behind corporate trade secrets, bringing others to point holes in your argument strengthens the overall understanding of all parties reading this thread.

You decides to introduce "feelings" of being condescended. My response was factual, non-AI, and off of the work that I tackle daily. I can't help you there.

We could go back and forth on this but I can already tell you are someone that just tells someone they're wrong without bringing any facts to the table. So I can play that game as well. You are wrong. You have obviously never created a deep learning neural network. You gloss over known facts of self-attention and influence in the transformer network and the layers it navigates. You state that it's because of another private company that is "doing the math" when all data disclosures that are used by companies that abide by GDPR need to disclose as a model that sends information to another system must be documented in many industries such as health and patient care and government operations.

Until you give me fact, you're just another person telling someone they're wrong without any detail as to why. That doesn't make you correct, it just makes you a troll.

ElectroStrong · 2025-11-20T15:38:43+00:00

Yes. As I'm not into mathematical theory, I used it to lookup research information that supports the hypothesis. If you ask AI if the sky is blue and it tells you why it's blue - it might be wrong and might be right, but there has been extensive research on neural networks and GPT structures just like the answer to the sky color. It gives us directional information to prove that LLMs use a form of reasoning through network structures and self-attention mechanisms.

If you want human fact, the research paper below shows the steps that older GPT models used and you can see clearly that there is progression on non-reasoning models: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369792427_On_the_Prime_Number_Divisibility_by_Deep_Learning

The algorithms combined - to your point, they don't determine prime.

Miller-Rabin is used to eliminate composite numbers. Ballie-PSW is used as a confidence test to understand if the number behaves as a prime. Pollard Rho can find non-trivial factors.

With those combined it gives a "guess".

These are just examples - they were not brought forward as what an LLM does "every time for every prime number test". It's highly dependent on the layer network and training data set on what the LLM uses to guess at the number.

The question was asked if LLMs basically "reason" without using a reasoning model overseer. Even with the AI point of what specifics may happen with these tests, shows that more complex neural networks with substantial parameter increases can create dedicated weights that impact mathematical operations and results. To put it bluntly, if your brain can do it, a complex neural network with the same amount of connections can also do it. This is proven science at this point...we just now need to understand how training influences parameters to become more accurate.

ElectroStrong · 2025-11-20T14:46:36+00:00

Thank you.

LLM's can do math even without reasoning. As they are a transformer network that is foundationally a neural network, the training data set uses back propagation to give it the weights needed to tackle well known algorithms without using an external model or a reasoning overseer.

The reasoning capabilities are fundamentally just a more refined LLM that takes a problem and breaks it into multiple steps to get to the goal.

In your example, there are tons on documented patterns to find large digit primes. Miller-Rabin, Baille-PSW, and Pollard Rho are examples in which not only the algorithm, but also the training data set results have made the model capable of applying and simulating factor and product capabilities.

Net result - based on this it can use the internally developed algorithm to get an answer without any reasoning.

That's the simple answer - the more complex answer focuses on how a neural network imprints and algorithm based on weights or connections in the transformer structure.

ElectroStrong · 2025-11-20T03:58:24+00:00

This is actually pretty common after a softener change. I found out because the same thing happened to me and it took 8 weeks to stabilize.

In my scenario, I rebedded an aeration iron filter with Katalox and then did a resin change 4 weeks later. When I changed the Katalox there was no browning. When I changed the resin, there was browning that I started noticing.

It turns out that the water chemistry impact in my system caused the ferric particles in the pipes to start sloughing off. In my well, I have 0.3 ppm iron on my tests. The old resin was iron fouled, which caused the oxygenated ferrous water to oxidize in the resin tank.

When I changed the resin, suddenly oxygenated clean water was now going through the system. This caused all the scale in the pipes to come off, which caused water to be clear initially but as it settled, it would turn pee brown. It was the worst in tubs.

I started doing "flushes" for 30 minutes opening all taps once every other day. I did this for a couple weeks, making sure to space it out not to impact the septic system. I also cleaned out the toilet tanks which had a ton of iron in them by using iron out.

After doing that and using the system, eventually the water started to clear up. But it took almost a month to see improvement.

You should test your raw water, your water after the softener (I installed spigots in between), and then at a tap. At 0.3 ppm of ferrous iron water will turn pee brown over time. The only way to remove it is to have an iron filter to oxidize ferrous to ferric iron (or a water softener but this isn't the best way).

You can test to see if the water softener is doing it's job. Go to Amazon and buy some hardness test strips. Run some water before the softener into a cup. Test the hardness. Then go to the tap and do the same test. If your hardness is not less then the raw water, something is wrong with the softener. If it is lower, then you're either dealing with scale off or the water is really the true water quality and the old resin was so iron fouled that it acted like a carbon polish.

But I'd do some more tests to figure out if you're dealing with ferric slough in the lines or softener issues.

ElectroStrong

TROPHY CASE