We have very hard water here in Orange County, California. Scale builds up pretty fast on anything that comes in contact with our public water. Water softeners that use rock salt or potassium are banned in our area.
I have been researching whole-house water filtering systems, but don’t know what criteria to deem important. There are four in our family, and our house of 3,000 sq. ft. has three baths and a pool. The water filter would be an exterior installation, and it appears that we have a 1″ diameter supply line.
Prices seem to range from $650-$3,000+, and some are maintennance free, with 10 year warranties, and others need periodic backflushing, and filter replacements.
Does anyone out there have personal experience with any of these systems? Praise and horror stories are both welcome.
Thanks,
TimberWolfe
Replies
A filter won't do much to prevent scale buildup. Will reduce sediment (rust, silt, etc). Chemically altering the pH (with an acid feed system, eg) may reduce scale slightly, but likely at the expense of more rapid copper pipe erosion.
Get a professional water analysis before you do anything or invest any money in any system. First, you'll know what you're dealing with. Second, you'll be able to get the correct, and complete, system to help cure the problem. And, once you know what you're facing, you might get some particular help on one of these boards.
Good luck.
Griff
Filters don't remove dissolved minerals.
You need to talk to a reputable water treatment engineer.... not a filter, softener, RO salesperson.
"But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.... and just as you want people to treat you, treat them in the same way."
I have seen magnets applied where water softeners were not allowed but it is difficult to find an engineer who knows anything about them.
You should be able to attain a high quality drinking water system for $600.00 (includes media prefilter/carbon prefilter/RO module/and media post filter) Gets the drinking water much tastier but won't help the pipes.
Persevere! I would like to hear if you have found a solution.
I've seen magnets applied to all sorts of pipes. Never seen them do any good.Whatever you do, don't waste money on an "electronic" or "ultrasonic" or "magnetic" water softener. The only thing they soften is your wallet.
I've used a two stage simple system from American Plumber on two houses. One housing is a paper filter, the other charcoal. It won't take out scale, but it does remove grit which damages fixtures, and removes the chlorine taste. It fits 1" pipe and the cost is about $260 I think. A set of filters is about $100 though - lasts about 60,000 gallons. I do wish it had clear bell housings so I could see the condition of the filter without opening the filter up. If you install anything, be sure to place isolation valves on each side of the system. You might even want to have a bypass option, in case something happens.
Something else I'd install, if doing it all over again, is a drain-down valve, running from the bypassed filter segment to a floor drain. When you bypass the filter there is still a fair amount of pressure in there, and the tiny pressure-relief buttons just squirt water all over everything. Better to have a regular valve that will direct the water to a drain.This drain-down valve will also come in handy when you need to drain the house plumbing for some reason.
I just finished installing a whole house filter using the AquaPure housing with a sediment & grit element. My water tests fine, but the particles are constantly clogging the strainers and irrigation valves. It has a clear cover, but the white element turned brown immediately when I turned on the water. I have pressure guages on both sides, hopefully will indicate when the element is clogging. So unless it eventually turns black, I'm not sure a clear cover does much.
Give it time. We have the same, if yours takes 2 elements. We get a gradual filling, bottom up, of sediment from the well. This is not a coating on the element. It's obvious that no filtration is happening below the sediment level in the plastic housing. We let it go until about 3/4 clogged before changing. Works great.
If your brown coating is clay, you'll have more trouble.PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
Thanks for the info. My system has a single element about 8"; I saw the double in a catalogue, but the local supplier didn't stock it and said it wouldn't really add much. It's been in since last October and there's about an inch of sediment. I've had the irrigation system running for two weeks (late spring in MA) with no problems.
Would you recommend I wait for 3/4 coverage of the element or change it annually regardless?
Change it the first time your wife complains about the water pressure.
Yeah, my wife complains when the dishwasher doesn't fill fast enough.
Ray's got it right. I don't generally even look at the sediment level until I hear that the washer's filling too slowly. In our case that's well over 1/2 filled with sediment.
If you'd prefer to change before a complaint, it's only a matter of filters. I like to get the longest life I can. A clear housing makes for an easy check.
Had an odd experience a couple of weeks ago. Drove my mother to her summer home in Michigan. Went to turn on the water and discovered a sediment filter installed since I was there last May. Seems my BIL read the new washer's instructions and had it installed. Unfortunately it didn't occur to him to drain it when he drained the rest of the system, which is entirely in the basement (jet pump and well included).
The freeze there was enough to break the filter housing. As he hadn't arranged any bypass, no water until I either re-plumbed or replaced the housing. I got lucky at a tractor supply place in the closest town. They had another brand filter that was exactly the same size as the one the water treatment folks installed.
My mother had no idea there was a filter, nor why she needed one for the first time in 60 yrs. After looking at the element from last summer and the date on the receipt, I agreed. My guess is she'll need a new element in maybe 5 yrs, maybe 10. Which'd put her at 104. I left a spare element, just in case. PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
"The freeze there was enough to break the filter housing. As he hadn't arranged any bypass, no water until I either re-plumbed or replaced the housing. I got lucky at a tractor supply place in the closest town. They had another brand filter that was exactly the same size as the one the water treatment folks installed."I recently put in an under the counter taste filter. But I was looking at Lowes and they had a cross reference.There are a large number of companies that make interchangable sediment and taste filters.Now all of the fance multi-cartridge and quick change systems where propiritory. but the basic unscrew and you have a bucket of water with a filter in it cartridge for under counter or whole house filtering are fairly standardized.
but the basic unscrew and you have a bucket of water with a filter in it cartridge for under counter or whole house filtering are fairly standardized.
I'll take your word for it, but it was my third stop and last hope. Before that, I'd found 3 brands that didn't interchange with what I had. May have interchanged with each other, don't know, I wasn't paying attention to that.
PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
That is a good point, and actually I did that too. I just had them put a boiler drain valve above the house shut-off. I can use a hose or bucket or whatever to drain the system.
I used to be an industrial and potable water water chemist, and others are right, be very skeptical of advice from anyone who's trying to sell you a system.
Try talking to your water supplier. They ought to have annual reports of water hardness, dissolved solids, pH, etc. The sort of info a good water chemist or engineer needs to design a hardness-removal system.
If you can't use a sodium or potassium based softener, you're pretty much limited to a reverse osmosis system (which will be very expensive for a whole house system, and typically will waste a lot of water), or a hydronium-based ion exchange resin systems, where H+ ions (instead of Na+ or K+) are substituted for the Ca+2 and Mg+2 ions that comprise water hardness. You can't regenerate the hydronium ion exchange resins at home like you can the Na or K based ones; it takes strong mineral acids to regenerate the hydronium based resins.
I'd suggest using an RO system for drinking water, not treating the rest, and just replacing the pipes as they scale up. When you look at the cost of an RO system, and the cost of the water wasted to run it (most RO systems use water pressure to push pure water through the membrane, and so it takes 4-6 gallons of tap water to produce one gallon of pure water), replacing the pipes in 10 to 15 years will look pretty cost-effective.
Regards,
Cliff
Water softeners are banned in your area? Where do you live? My house in Cypress came with a water softener, and I've seen both rock salt and potassium at the big box stores.
Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
Also a CRX fanatic!
FYI-
We live in Lake Forest. I believe most, if not all cities in So. Orange County ban rock salt water softeners, as the Water Districts are concerned about discarded salt getting into the water treatment plants.
Regards,
TimberWolfe
Timber Wolfe,
Stay away from carbon filters. They strip the chlorine from the water. You need chlorine to stop biofilm growth in the system. Without it the microbes will grow and could expose you to all kinds of nasty illnesses.
Joe Phillips
Plastics pay the bills, Woodworking keeps me sane!