I have been told that you buy a two filter system: one for sediment and the other for chlorine, etc. They are installed at the point of entrance where public water comes into the house. In my case, the filters will go under the house but in an accessible area (although I can't imagine what is easily accessible under the house). My partner and plumber will set it up. The filters are around $250-300 (total I believe) and have to be replaced once every 6 mos or so. However, my partner seems to feel that once every nine months is more than adequate. He will buy the filters through a company that does the filtration systems for vineyards, but I don't know the name or location of the company. If you want, I can find out. He's probably dealt with them in the past for our well (on our other house in the country). As if water isn't expensive enough, now we've got to pay for ongoing filtration systems.

I just went though this ordeal myself. The builder brought in Water Boy (see my posts on this forum about him) and he tried to rip me for 8 thousand dollars. I solved the problem myself for 1000. As mentioned above - get your water professionally tested. You must have very accurate measurements of hardness and iron so that the filtration system can be optimized for your specific situation. My well water is hard (9 grains per gallon) and the iron is also high (2 parts per million which equals about 8 to 10 grains per gallon). This meant that I had a problem that a small water filter was not going to address. I found a great source - www.abundantwaterflow.com. Talk to a guy named Mark in sales. He is very knowledgeable and honest. I ordered a water softener from him for a total of 700 dollars which included shipping. It came with a Fleck 7000 valve which is (as I found from many searches on the Plumbing forum) a high end control valve - very easy to program as I did in about 5 minutes. I had my plumber (nickname John Wayne - and I swear he looks exaclty like him, except he speaks with a Slavic accent) install the system for 300 dollars. Very simple. I also thought that I would need an iron filter - and if you read on the Plumbing forum (see aliceinwonderland posts) - the Pyrolox filter is recommended for iron. Mark convinced me to NOT buy the iron filter yet - to install the softener first since it will remove some iron. That is why I like Abundantwaterflow - they could have easily made another 1000 dollars since I was ready to buy that too. But they gave me an honest opinion and a lower cost solution that can be expanded if required. I had the plumber set the system up so that I can add in the iron filter myself if that becomes necessary. I am waiting on the results of a recent test to see if I really need that type of filter or the softener will do the job for both hardness and iron. The softener was delivered to my house in 4 boxes. The tank is fiberglass and is very light, the resin filter material is heavy - one box about 45 pounds the other box around 25 pounds), and finally the brine tank and otjer parts which is light and looks like a small garbage can. I assembled it myself - the hardest part by far was getting the resin into the tank. The stuff is like caviar - small beads - and was a little difficult to pour in because I was dumb. I hoisted the 50 pound bag up and poured directly into the tank. DON"T do this - use a small pail and dump some resin into the pail - then pour that small amount of resin into the tank. It will take a little longer but is much easier and safer. It took me about 1 hour to assemble all the parts and connect up everything except the main water input and the flex line drains - which John Wayne did for me. I hope this helps. One thing i found out is that there are a lot of people who will throw a lot of mumbo jumbo at you on the complexities of doing this yourself. It is not that hard - just do your research.

We are on city water (which isn't very hard) and we also are looking for a whole house water filter system to filter Chlorine and Chloramine. And also a filter for pharmaceuticals. Most chlorine is injested in the shower and not in drinking water. The POU filters for the shower can't be hidden as well as the POU filters for drinking water in the kitchen, hence my quest for the whole house. From what I can find out, it looks like even if we have a whole house filter for chlorine/chloramine, we also need to install a POU reverse osmosis filter for our drinking water in order to filter pharmaceuticals. I also have read numerous reviews, which all sound "slanted". So if you have learned anything that convinces you in favor of one product over another, I would be very interested. Right now, I'm looking at Aquasana and Puronics. Did you go with a particular product for whole house filtering?

@aliceinwonderland_id, i have pasted the results. Where is says nn it represents none noted. it might be hard to read but note the first number is the result, the 2nd is national standard and the last number In each row is the min. detected level. Test results where contamination was detected at or above the min. detection level , but not above the national standard. Heavy metals: results national standard: Min. detection level Calcium 153.9 nn 2 Copper . 0.008 1.3 0.004 Magnesium 7 nn 0.1 Potassium 1 nn 1 Silica 15.4 nn 0.1 sodium 46 nn 1 zinc 0.01 5 0.004 Other: chloride 39 250 5 sulfate 66 250 5 results national standard: Min. detection level physical factors: alkalinity (total as CaCO3) 370 nn 20 Turbidity .2NTU 1 0.1 Radiologicals: Gross beta 4.33PCi/L nn 4 Test results where the contaminant was detected above the standard, which is not an EPA enforceable maximum contaminant level. Heavy metals: results national standard: Min. detection level manganese 0.053 0.05 0.004 physical factors: hardness 410 100 10 TDS 550 1 0.01 (total dissolved solids) hm I assume it's ferrous since the water does come out clear, BUT I have to say that the water in the toilet for instance is also clear. I will investigate tomorrow when I go to the property if particles develop after leaving out a cup of water for a while and I will let you know. pls let me know what you think regarding results. btw I did not include any results that tested fine. thanks in advance!