Whole house water filtration for well water suggestions
BrunoF
| Posted in General Questions on
I am looking for suggestions on which brands / products should be considered for a whole house well water filtration system. There seems to be quite a few online options that may or may not be snake oil but it seems like it should be pretty simple to install a multi-filter setup that will capture sediment but also capture the more harmful stuff if it is present.
thx
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I have used these whole house water filters in three different houses.
https://www.purewaterproducts.com/whole-house-filters-compact
In the first house, I paid a plumber. Since the house was on city water, I skipped the sediment pre-filter, but added a pressure reducing valve.
In the second house, I installed two filters, using push-fit and PEX. Originally, I planned to install the filters in parallel, but the plumbing was too difficult. Again, I added a pressure reducing valve immediately upstream of the filters.
In the third house, the basement was finished, so I could not add the filter just downstream of the shut-off. Instead, the single filter is immediately upstream of the water heater. I hoped to installed two filters, but space constraint meant that only filter fit. Since the cold water is unfiltered, I added an undersink filter in the kitchen.
I just recently went through researching this for my own home and ended up buying a whole house filter + softener + UV system from Crystal. There are a lot of brands out there but most are newer and more expensive and it made me nervous to spend five grand on a system if filters wouldn't be available in a few years. Crystal has already had great customer service and they've been around awhile. Note that I would not recommend a whole house RO system. I originally wanted one despite the wasted water but regular filters are good enough these days that they get out the same amount of bad stuff.
Which Crystal? There seem to be several?
Have you had your water tested?
What do you think you need to remove from your water?
Are you on a well?
Many homes mine included need a water softener.
I have a reverse osmosis drinking water tap in the kitchen.
Walta
Yes. I am on a well and the only real concern is high sodium and maybe a faint sulphur odor. The water isn’t hard at all and all the other contaminants are well below the recommended limit or even below the detectable limit.
Anyone who owns a private well should have their drinking water tested for bacteria annually but almost no one does. I did have my new well tested for 100 or so possible contaminates for $150 or so. Your local government likely has a lab run bacteria test at a very low cost like $15.
Is sodium a problem in the water locally? Where I live almost no sodium from the well but lots after the water softener.
A $300 RO filter for the drinking water removes that and would get your sulfur.
Walta
BrunoF,
+1 on Walta's suggestion to get the water tested and tailor the treatment to what you find.
Air filtration systems are very necessary and for future needs. because if in the future you will install a water heater, to maximize performance you will need this filter system. The best combination of the air filter system and Wika Water Heater will make the product stronger for more than 1 decade. I can recommend NicoFilter, Terra Water Filter and Omega
what you have is fine but a better option would be something like a nexsand filter (it is the sediment filter done with sand in a media tank that backwashes itself and thus will not plug up). Where i am building we draw water from a lake and with the cartridge style filter it would likely plug in a number of weeks which would not only be costly but also a huge pain to have to watch the pressure gauges all the time to stay on top of the sediment filter flow. They also do the same thing with carbon which is nice but not as important (unless the water has something in it that carbon would remove and you want more contact time as the tank will give much more room for media and thus more time in contact with the media as it passes through).
Do you have a sewer or a septic system? When I was researching, many people do not take this into account. We have a private well and septic system on our last two properties. If you have a septic system, RO systems and water softner's are usually considered a no-go. RO systems create a large amount of "waste" water (avg 4 gallons per 1 gallon of RO) which is terrible for your septic bacteria health if the whole house is running on RO.
In our last home we went with a Premiere Sales PS-SS20SF – Stainless Steel Whole House Water Filter with BG-20SC Cartridge (based on sending them our test results) before the well pressure tank and a PS-PURUF – Ultrafiltration Membrane System – Amazing Alternative to Traditional Reverse Osmosis Systems for under sink drinking water. It worked great and we loved it.
Our new house is in Vermont and we have very hard water here (109 mg/L CaCO3), to the point where we get Calcium sand buildup in all the screens on the hot water side of all appliances and faucets and need to clean them monthly because the pressure drops. We have not pulled the trigger on the PS-2000C – UF Membrane with Carbon Filter for Well Water / Whole House which was their recommendation because of the price I am hesitant to try it, but it seems like the only good option so we are ordering it because we were happy with their other products, and cross our fingers that it works as well as a actual softner. The nice thing is you can backflush the filter by turning a valve on the system, so you get a long time out of the filters.
Hope that helps. If you are on sewer, you have more options with a RO and/or softner.
-Evan
“If you have a septic system, RO systems and water softner's are usually considered a no-go. RO systems create a large amount of "waste" water (avg 4 gallons per 1 gallon of RO) which is terrible for your septic bacteria health if the whole house is running on RO.”
If you equip your RO system with a non-electric Permeate Pump it will reduce the waste water up to 80%. My system seems to produce more drinking water than waste water.
How many gallons of water do you drink a day? Certainly, less than a gallon per person per day I believe almost every water system can handle the extra load from an RO drinking water.
I do not see why the waste water from an RO system would be a problem for the bacteria in the septic tank. The brine discharge from a water softener could be a problem if not diluted.
Where I have live well water is always very hard making a water softener a necessity and generally the salty backwash does go to the septic without a problem. Admittedly it is less than ideal but it generally works.
Walta