Additional Info:

City Water Report:

http://ridgefieldwa.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/WaterQuality2015.pdf

I will be testing the water at a neighbors house in the next few weeks.

Our house will not be done till June.

Hi Ed.

So the person you really want to hear from on here is Aliceinwonderland.

That said, here's my 2 cents.

You can't really design a filtering system until you get the water sample tested at a reputable independent lab. Water reports aren't all that helpful.

There are some things that will come back in that test that will significantly change the design of any treatment system (such as iron being present).

If you are concerned about chlorine, consider the higher cross-linked resin in a water softener. I think that carbon filtering all of the water going through the softener would be vastly more expensive (in filters) and introduce more pressure drop than just changing out the resin in 10 years.

In my home, I have a big blue housing and carbon filter on the drinking water, but not anything else. My toilets just don't need carbon filtered water.

Note that pressure drop is not a good indicator of a carbon filter's ability to remove contaminates.

There look to be some very high-flow applications (multi head shower, large tub) that you need to put some numbers to as far as gallons per minute. Those numbers are important in the design. You will also need to determine how many gallons per day used in the household. I think a normal estimate is 75-80 gallons per person per day.

Just a couple tips about PEX: Pex pipe is cheap, but the brass fittings are stupid expensive. After doing my manifold / filter / tankless setup in pex I realized it would have been much easier / cheaper in copper because of all the fittings. After the manifold it makes sense to use pex.

Also, pex has a smaller ID and the fittings fit inside the pipe, rather than outside the pipe like copper. Don't assume the same flow rates for 1" copper and pex, for example.

So, to reiterate: Post back here when you have your test results. Provide the GPM on the high-flow uses. Also let us know how many people in the house so we can estimate the gallons per day. Lastly, reconsider doing whole house carbon / sediment filtering using big blue filter housings and instead think about filtering drinking water.

For now, you should plan on having your plumbing contractor install three-valve bypass "drops" for the potential filters and for the softener. That way it will be quick and easy to install whatever you decided on later.

Your city's water looks to be quite good so treatment should not have to be terribly complicated and it is highly unlikely you will need three cartridge filters. If you really want whole-house carbon filtration for chlorine removal, it should go upstream from the softener and a backwashing filter is a much better option than a cartridge.

When you get water tested, you want the following to supplement the information available in the city water report: pH, TDS, hardness, sulfates, dissolved iron (this one is fairly unlikely in chlorinated water as the chlorination process forces iron to its ferrous, particulate, state), particulates. See if you can get a few of those city reports to see if there is much variation in hardness levels.

Thanks for the great info!

I'm looking into testing today.

The plumbing rough in is already complete and I had a loop installed.

That wall is in a back bay in my garage.
The tank-less water heater will be on the far left. You can see the water lines and the gas for that roughed in.

On the far right, just out of the picture, will be a utility sink.

I'm planning on putting in the water treatment setup very near the water heater. The one thing I'm imagining possibly adding in the future is a pump to bump up pressure.

From the stand point of what all I'm concerned about on the hard water front, we have a Mr Steam generator going in, there is the tank-less, dishwasher and the laundry.

There are only three of us in the house at the moment, though there may be a fourth at some point and we often have guests.

Part of my thinking in over engineering the system now is that I have excess resources at the moment and will have the time to get it installed and very comfortable doing the work myself. Also I want to define the space/system so that I can use the rest of the space for other stuff.

Part of my thinking with the big blues has been how standard and versatile they are.

I was planning on the 10% cross-linked anyway as I would rather invest upfront and get better performance and longevity.

On the carbon front, I had done some reading that led me to believe that the RFC filters were high enough flow to not be an issue.

That is enough for now.

Thanks!

One reality I'm faced with as are most of us these days, is water pressure limiting on fixtures.
I believe all my fixtures are limited to 2gpm.

That said, I think that the nature of my master shower setup will allow me to run 3 things at once, possibly 4.

That would put my max rate there at between 6-8gpm.

I really don't want pressure to be an issue so having one or two other things going on in the house while someone is taking a maxed out shower in the master bath with no perceived drop is the goal. As I think I already mentioned, I'm ok with adding a pump now or later if needed. I'm also trying to limit the impact of my processing system on pressure.

One thing I plan on testing is the water pressure in our area. The house across the street was just completed, same builder and similar floor plan. I plan on testing the water from there and checking the water pressure.

I just talked to a local lab and they wanted $375 for the Washington IOC test.

I'm now looking at using: National Testing Labs which someone recommended here.

Hey Ed,

I'm glad that Aliceinwonderland responded: s/he is really the go-to person for water treatment on here.

I think that you are mistaken about all of your fixtures being limited.
Generally a tub spout is about 4 gpm. Your larger tub may be more.

Shower heads are generally 2.5 gpm, body sprays are generally 1 gpm, some rainfall and such can be more than 2.5 gpm. I've seen multiple shower head setups that will empty a water heater in 15 minutes.

$375 seems out of the ball-park for water testing.

Just an FYI: My experience with water quality reports in a larger city with a single water company with multiple sources (surface, wells, etc) was that the report was way off in terms of hardness. Your experience with a smaller utility may be different.

I added a separate post asking about water testing.

You are right on at least some of the fixtures!

Here is an exact list of what is going into the master bath:

Two Handle Centerset Lavatory Faucet

2594-MPU-DST

Monitor® 17 Series Valve Only
T17094

Single-setting Shower Head - 2.5gpm
RP48686

Linden 3 Setting Diverter Trim
T11894

Delta Slide Bar Handshower - 2.5gpm
57021

Monitor® 17 Series Shower With In2ition® Two-in-one Shower - 2.0gpm
T17294-I

Roman Tub With Hand Shower Trim
T4794

I'm not going to look all of these up - you can do that. What you should know is that tub spouts aren't limited other than by their supply and internal passages. The reasoning is that you are going to fill the tub... there's no logic to limiting that flow.

Also, you should know that shower heads are limited to 2.5 gpm, but some setups have multiple heads running at the same time.

Read about water softener sizing: Usually you want to de-rate the softener in order to be more salt efficient - however if you go too big you will have channeling.

I like the big blue housing and the carbon filters that go in them for filtering drinking water. I can't see it for whole house.

My water softener is 1.5 CF 10% crosslinked resin with a Fleck digital valve and cost me $550 delivered from Amazon. At that rate I'm just not going to worry about a lot of pre-filtering with carbon to protect it. I'm on city water and I figure it will last 10-12 years before I replace the resin (or the entire unit).