Rebedding a whole house dechlorinator

Our new rental house came with a 8x40 Kinetico dechlorinator in the garage, next to a Kinetico dual tank water softener system. The dechlorinator is basically an 8" diameter container that is 40" tall, about 3/4 full of granulated activated charcoal (GAC). As the water flows up from the bottom of the container through the GAC, chlorine is removed from the water. However, the GAC only lasts for a finite time before it needs to be replaced. The specs for a similar dechlorinator say something about 60,000 gallons of water can be treated, but it depends on the amount of chlorine in the water. Since the system is 12 years old, I am going to change out the charcoal bed.

The dechlorinator is the black bottle on the left. The two black bottles on the right are a 2-bottle water softener system that works in conjunction with the brine tank on the left.

The left bottle shows the 2 water pipes going to the dechlorinator. Release them by pushing up the metal pin in the metal bracket on the top of the Kinetico 8x40 dechlorinator.

Kinetico service wants $387 to replace the charcoal bed. With Kinetico, everything is exorbitantly expensive. Interestingly, the Kinetico manager said that the system I have is sized for a 5000 sq ft house, and we are living in a 1600 sq ft house. Apparently in 2011 the 3 yr old system was moved to this house from a prior residence, and is way oversized for this house.

So I was able to recharge (rebed) the dechlorinator myself for under $100. I bought 1 cubic foot of coconut shell granulated activated carbon with a size of 12x40 (that means that most of the grain sizes fit through a 12 size mesh, but not a 40 size mesh).

Do not buy the GAC from affordablewater.us. Their product title says "free shipping", but it is an outright lie, which I learned the hard way. Find another GAC provider.

Procedure to rebed the dechlorinator

So what i did is to twist the top off the dechlorinator. First I had to put the system in bypass mode, then detach the dechlorinator bottle from the supply pipes, but pushing a pin up through the metal bracket that held the supply pipes on. Then I had to wiggle the container off the pipes. Before unscrewing the top off the dechlorinator, I rolled the dechlorinator on its bottom rim until it was outside the garage, then laid it on its side to let most of the water drain out.

Then to unscrew the top off the dechlorinator, I put a 3' long pipe into one of the water supply holes in the dechlorinator top, and gently turned counterclockwise (lefty loosey). With the cap off, I saw that the inside of the dechlorinator was just a bunch of granulated carbon with a plastic pipe sitting in the middle. The next step is to dump the old carbon out into a 5 gallon bucket or empty large plastic storage container. This took a bit of shaking. Then the tube came out also, and it had a filtering plastic sieve at the bottom to make sure that none of the carbon gets into the tube. Note that the dechlorinator also had a small metal sieve in one of the water pipe holes in the cap, to make sure the carbon didn't float out downstream in the water supply pipes.

Now it's time to rinse out any remaining carbon with a garden hose. By the way, if when you empty the carbon out, gravel also comes out, then you'll need to purchase replacement gravel to put in the bottom of your dechlorinator. That is one of the options when you check out at affordablewater.us.

So I ordered my replacement 1 cubic foot of GAC, and waited for it to be delivered.

Once I received the GAC, the procedure was to first put the pipe back into the container, with the top taped off so no carbon gets inside, and use some sort of funnel to gradually fill the container back up with the new carbon. Remove the tape, reassemble the cap, don't forget the small metal sieve, and hook it back up to the water pipes. 

Easy as pie. Saved me $300. Worth it.