Product
Fleck 5600 SXT
Category
Home & Garden
Report number
20220926-44090-2147353645
Ownership age
About 43 months to failure (from purchase date when reported)
Failure type
Electrical shock / short
Incident narrative
SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20220926-44090-2147353645. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Fleck 5600 SXT (Fleck 5600SXT 48,000 Grain Water Softener Digital SXT Metered Whole House System from Amazon.com (appears to have a brand change now)- [REDACTED]; includes black brine tank, water softener with resin (large black cylinder) and electronic display that attaches (via plastic threads included with product) to top of softener cylinder). Incident: We woke up on the morning of Thursday, September 22nd at about 5:45am to a garage with approximately 7-8 inches of water standing and continuing to fill (though water was escaping through newly broken wall). We immediately noticed that the top of our Pentair Water Softener had exploded off of the unit, gushing water into our garage and kitchen. It was gushing water up toward an electrical outlet (where softener was plugged in) as well almost rising to the level of outlets in garage (completely covering an electrical cord we had running). In addition to the risk of drowning our pets, this sudden rupture immediately placed the life of myself, my family, and our pets in grave danger. Had any of us walked into garage, there's a high likelihood we would have been electrocuted. As shown in photos obtained by us and the water mitigation company (and also stated by plumber that came out to restore water to our home), it's evident that the top seal of the unit (where electrical component attaches to cylinder shaped water softener) containing the threads split diagonally, causing the electrical component to rupture above the unit and leaving a heavy stream of 75 PSI water running into garage throughout the night. The product had been purchased in March of 2019 through Amazon.com (from third party seller [REDACTED]), and is supposedly covered by a 5-year Pentair warranty. However, because of the complete loss of faith in the product by Pentair and the tens of thousands of dollars in property damage, we will likely n
Official report number: 20220926-44090-2147353645. Search that ID on SaferProducts.gov or match it in the CPSC public database export to verify this record.