Well siddle that was absolutely no help! Nice way to sneak in and SPAM your business. I don't believe baltomom was looking for a steel building! Baltomom, being on city water with 4ppm of chlorine, sediment and oxidized iron you will need a back washing filter to catch the sediment and remove chlorine. I might suggest a Multi-Media backwashing filter system with about 8 lbs of KDF media added. This will remove all the sediment and chlorine. The Aquasana filter has carbon and KDF but the problem is it will load up with iron quickly the next time that flush of iron/sediment problem occurs there is no way to backwash the system. So it will be useless in a very short time. Do the times this problem occurs correlate to when hydrants are flushed by your city? Also if you are on a cul-de-sac or dead end this is a common problem. You often get the brunt of sediment especially during high use periods IE: summer. RJ

I'm not a plumber, but I am an engineer. I've mostly worked in dirty water since school, but I did mostly clean water then. THMs are trihalomethanes, and they are a class of chemicals called disinfection byproducts. Basically, any chemical that's added to disinfect drinking water reacts with naturally-occurring organic matter in the water (think the dissolved remnants of stuff like leaves, algae) to yield tiny tiny concentrations of these chemicals. The main thing that affects how much THMs form is the time the water sits in the pipe and storage tanks between the plant and the point of use. The last I paid attention to it, we know that THMs in massive quantities are carcinogenic in the lab. The rules your utility follows are an attempt to extrapolate from what we know to protect the public against exposure to tiny amounts over a long time. FWIW, my recollection is that the prime exposure path is actually via steam inhaled in the shower. The good news is that a carbon filter is a great way to remove the residual disinfectant (chlorine or chloramines), THMs, and other organic chemicals (VOCs- volatile organic compounds). And it takes care of the main complaint that leads to getting a filter in the first place- that the water doesn't taste good. I'm not a big RO proponent for home use. Unless you have someone who's immunocompromised or have a lot of dissolved solids (due to softening or from being in a coastal area that has saltwater intrusion), I think it's overkill. And it's expensive, has expensive consumables, and wastes a lot of water to produce a little. There are always exceptions, but that's my general feeling. Your faucet should be fine if you get a carbon filter. The problem with RO is that it makes the water more likely to dissolve metals it comes in contact with. Water that's just carbon filtered is still buffered to prevent this. I don't think there's a problem with going generic. The issue with the proprietary systems is that they lock you into their replacement cartridges and those are usually at a premium. You can get housings and filters much more cheaply. One tradeoff that comes to mind is that the proprietary setups may have an easier arrangement to replace filters. Otherwise, you have to be a bit of a plumber yourself to put together the housings, valves, fittings, etc. The simplest setup would be a single filter. This is like what’s in most fridge and point of use filters. There are combination cartridges that remove lead, cysts (tiny pathogen eggs that are very hard to kill) and have carbon for chlorine, THMs, VOCs. A step up would be a multistage system that adds a sediment filter and maybe a second stage of carbon. This is what we have in the water coolers at my office, which run on tap water instead of jugs. As for the pool, the color problem after the tornadoes is a bit of a stumper. Probably not something that’s going to happen often. And I don’t know if a simple sediment filter would take care of it. Otherwise, there’s a whole ‘nother set of chemistry going on in your pool, and frankly I wouldn’t worry about filtering what you fill the pool with unless it looks bad. Not to mention that a carbon filter that sits around unused tends to have some of the stuff it’s collected re-dissolve into the water sitting there. Last but not least, how well any of this works is dependent on how good a job of maintenance you do. Timely filter replacement is critical. Either based on a conservative time schedule or testing the filtered water for chlorine breakthrough. A buddy who does water treatment for Coke’s bottlers reminded me lately that it’s also a good idea to flush the system with unfiltered tap water when you replace filters. This puts some chlorinated water through so that you kill anything that’s grown in the housing and tube/pipes. Not something I logistically can do with my fridge filter but a very good idea. McMaster Carr (industrial supply house) has always been a good reference to get an idea of cost, but Amazon also seems to carry most everything these days too. I’d look there and look at some of the pre-built systems to decide what works best for you.

GardenWeb Community, I need your assistance. I am needing to size a water softening and whole house filtering system for my home and there are many different approaches I have found on the web with different values, peak vs. average flow rates, etc. Based on the feedback I have read thus far from Justalurker and aliceinwonderland_id on this site I am leaning towards a Fleck softening system but not sure which one. Also looking for ideas on a whole home filtering system based on the below test results. We live in Anchorage, Alaska and we just bought a 6000 sqft., 3 bed 3.5 bath house with 3 people living in it (wife, 2.5 yr old daughter, and myself). All appliances are high efficiency Frigidaire Professional series, Triangle Tube Prestige Water heater, etc. A recent water test was performed by a local sales company and the basic results are as follows: TDS: 125 ppm Hardness: 10 gpg pH 7.0 Total Alkalinity 120 ppm Total Iron 0.1 ppm Total Manganese 0.2 ppm Coliform: Neg colonies/100mL Nitrate: 5.09 mg/L Arsenic: ND ug/L Let me know if any additional information is needed in order to provide any recommendations. Any recommendations are welcomed and I genuinely appreciate the assistance in advance. Regards, Derek

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!