Who Makes Clack Water Softeners?

Clack Corporation is a Wisconsin company that makes water softener components. They don't really manufacturer a complete, factory-built water softener. Instead, they sell their components through distributors and dealers, and these businesses assemble softeners using the Clack parts and components made by other manufacturers. So if you see a water softener that's advertised as a Clack Water Softener, it's tough to know exactly what the retailer means. It may be built using only Clack components (though Clack doesn't make water softener resin) or it could be just the Clack control valve and the rest of the system uses other components.

The water softener components that Clack are best known for are their control valves, treatment tanks, blow-molded brine tanks, and filtration media. We go into more detail about each category below.

The Clack WS1 Control Valve

The Clack WS1 is a control valve mechanism that's used on many water softeners built under many different names. Although the rest of the softener may not be manufactured by Clack, you will usually see any softener with a Clack control valve marketed as a Clack Water Softener.

The Clack WS1 control valve is well renowned for it's high flow capability, flexibility in programming (making it useful in many applications), ease of use, and longevity. It's widely considered one of the finest control valves available for building a residential water softener. The Clack control valve is comprised of a digital controller and the mechanical valve.  The digital controller is the interface at the front of the unit. Clack control valves are made with a number of different controllers, some of which are branded under different names:

The mechanical valve portion on all of these units is the same though - they only differ in the configuration of the controller. You'll know it's a Clack control valve if you can ID the following components on the physical portion of the valve:

Clack Blow Molded Brine Tanks

Clack manufacturers a variety of plastic brine tanks. Brine tanks are the vessel in a water softener that's used to hold the salt that regenerates the system. Clack uses a blow molding process to create these tanks in a number of sizes, colours, and configurations. Clack brine tanks are very highly regarded in the industry for consistency of construction and general quality.

Clack Media

"Media" is the filtration material that goes into the treatment tank of a system. Different media types will address different water issues through a combination of physical filtration (i.e. straining) and chemical processes. Clack media is commonly used in a number of important water treatment processes:

1. Birm® Media is used for the reduction of dissolved iron and manganese in water. It's very widely used in the industry because it's well priced and does a good job.
2. Greensand Plus is a media that used for the reduction of iron, manganese, hydrogen sulfide, arsenic and radium. It's typically regenerate used potassium permanganate which can be hard to find and is a little messy to deal with.
3. Calcite is a naturally occurring mineral that's mined out of the ground. It's used for neutralizing acidic water conditions as it will help to increase the pH of water.

Clack Media Tanks

Clack makes a line of very high quality media tanks that are used in the construction of water softeners and other water filtration equipment. They use a polyethylene liner and reinforce the tank with epoxy fibreglass to allow it to withstand residential water pressure. Clack media tanks are very highly regarded in the industry for quality and logevity.