Yeah, you're right with the carbon block. The flow rates would not be suitable for POE - my mistake. I'm not surprised that you find customers that are worried by "bacteria". I think many people hear that word and get afraid - I said so earlier. The fact is the vast majority of kinds of bacteria are harmless to humans. But I'm sure lots of folks would be scared by seeing a petri dish full of them just the same. I'm sure lots of folks would be suprised how many things they consume and touch would also cause a petri dish to overload with bacteria. Our goal though should be accurate information. If someone's fears still prevent them from doing something that's their choice. We should distinguish between bacteria that is a hazard to people (pathogenic) and ones that aren't. Water, air, objects, and food are all full of bacteria and we need to understand the actual health risks. Trying to avoid all bacteria is impossible. Trying to reduce harmless bacteria is wasting money that could be spent on efforts that actually do provide a health benefit. The link below is very interesting. It is an article from Water Conditioning and Purification Magazine. The article is titled "Bacteria in Drinking Water - Public Health Implications" and is dated July 2002. It is a consensus review of material from a NSF International and World Health Organization (WHO) International Symposium. The article specifically talks about activated carbon and the growth of bacteria - among other things. It's fairly, uh er, dense, reading but if there's any hardy souls still reading this thread they might find it interesting. I encourage anyone to read the entire article, and, for that matter, peruse other material on the site. But, for those who want the executive summary, below are some choice parts. Oh, I have no association in any way with this publication or it's authors. I'll note this article talks about tests with POU devices, I'll be doing another post shortly with another reference that talks about POE and POU jointly. This article at least clearly shows that changing from POE to POU will not prevent drinking "bacteria". It talks about the health risks of this bacteria and I believe that POE and POU have largely the same health risks. POE carbon-based devices are not nearly as common as POU so I'm not surprised these large organizations don't focus as much attention on them. In the quotes of the article below, know that "HPC" is a measurement of naturally occurring bacteria. ************************** "Interestingly, HPC levels in foods haven't raised the same concern as in the drinking water industry. It's not unusual to find very high numbers (>50,000 cfu/gram or ml) of HPC bacteria in a wide variety of foods such as pasteurized milk, cheeses, meats, yogurts and fresh produce. HPC bacteria consumed with food is generally several orders of magnitude larger than those consumed in water. A million HPC bacteria have been documented on a single gram of leaf lettuce and carrot sticks.(1)" *********************** "Granular activated carbon (GAC), commonly used in the water treatment industry, is known to concentrate bacteria and their growth substrates. As water passes through the GAC, bacteria may also be released. Point-of-use (POU) treatment devices have been shown to reduce the level of waterborne gastrointestinal disease and remove known microbial pathogens. It's not uncommon, however, to note a significant increase in HPC bacteria post treatment, possibly several-fold higher than the influent water. Re-growth of bacteria in POU devices occurs frequently during periods of non-use." **************************** "In addition, HPC bacteria didn't survive well at low pH (i.e., conditions of the human stomach). In fact, only 1-2 percent of HPC bacteria were found to have possible virulence factors, but still weren't associated with human disease." ************************** "Several large epidemiological studies were conducted in an attempt to define the public health impact of HPC bacteria in drinking water. The first was conducted in the United States and showed that a large number of households using various GAC POU devices had high HPC levels but no demonstrated health effects.(5) Likewise, a recent study conducted in California attempting to correlate HPC in tap water to gastrointestinal illness provided no such evidence.(6)" **************************** "In summary, an overwhelming body of evidence from human feed studies, animal studies, epidemiological studies, risk assessment, and virulence data all confer there's no medical rationale to control HPC concentrations in drinking water. The general consensus at the HPC symposium was that such common bacteria in drinking water wasn't associated with a significant public health risk."

When you buy softeners online the seller is relying on the customer proving accurate water condition, usage, and plumbing info (if and when an online seller cares about offering what the customer really needs) so when you don't get what you need it's your fault and the online seller still has their profit. If you want correctly sized and the right treatment hardware then get a comprehensive water test from a certified independent lab cause they have no interest in selling you water treatment.. Then you can evaluate the honesty and competence of the local water treatment dealers. Unless you get a performance guaranty in writing from a water treatment seller NEVER rely solely on tests done by them.

Milo, It's good to start your own thread instead of hijacking someone else's. I disagree quite a bit with Delray, I can't tell exactly what's going on with that particular unit but you don't want to mix media in your unit - in other words, you don't want carbon media in the same tank as the resin for the softener. You want those to be two different units. Different media have different backwashing requirements and lifespans. If you want a water softener, buy a decent water softener with an industry standard control valve (Clack or Fleck). If you want a carbon filter, decide if you need a simple cartridge type filter for drinking water (what I recommend) or a backwashing whole house filter. If you have a specific contaminate that can only be removed with reverse osmosis then get a separate unit to do that - usually only for drinking water. Whole house R/O is crazy expensive to buy, operate and maintain and is over-kill for virtually everything unless you need to remove a specific contaminate for drinking water. Most people don't need an R/O filter - even for drinking water. Keep in mind that R/O water is aggressive to metal plumbing unless minerals are added back in. I also disagree with: "whole house water filtering has to be fairly robust to last - that is why they are expensive. Kinteco (and others) make water filtering for restaurants, mfg plants etc and that is expensive since those businesses can't afford any breakdowns..." This is pretty bogus. We are talking about residential water treatment - not commercial treatment. A good quality residential water softener is about $600 online with an industry standard Fleck valve and no smoke and mirrors. That's the cost of the unit. Doesn't include installation and maintenance. A backwashing carbon unit with 1.5 cf of GAC is $500-600, again with a Fleck valve. A cartridge unit for drinking water will cost about $100 + $30 a year for the cartridge.

How about a follow up -- a way late follow up ... So the filter is supposed to be a whole home filter, because the city has super old pipes with a lot of sediment. However, the filter needs to be changes monthly, and my sister had no idea. She (unknowingly) let it go for years. It was so backed up that her house barely had water pressure. It should have been an easy fix when I went to help her, but the 100+ year old house had a faulty main shut off valve -- as well as the pre-filter valve being faulty. So she had to call a plumber to contact the city to shut off the water at the street/sidewalk. There was nothing I could have done from there, the city won't turn it off for a homeowner (unless they don't pay the bill, lol). She now gets 'subscribe and save' monthly filter deliveries from Amazon to remind her to change the filter. Luckily, the plumber was able to blow the back up sediment out of her pipes, and she didn't need any pipe replacement. Her water pressure is now back to the usual crummy-100-year-old-house water pressure, instead of the even worse pee dribble pressure that she had with the backed up filter and pipes. Thanks!