[greenclub] Whole House Water Filters

[Dawn, Cara (HQ-RA000)]

Does anyone have information/recommendations on whole house water filters?  I don’t recall seeing a prior discussion, sorry if this is a repeat question.

 

Cara Dawn

Contract Specialist

NASA Management Office

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

4800 Oak Grove Drive

Pasadena, CA  91109

(818) 354-6069

 

[Betina Pavri]

Hi Cara,

Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but we had an EcoWater whole house softener/filtration system for ~ 10 years or so. We installed it primarily due to very hard water at our house (the water was also heavily chlorinated). While that worked OK, it required regular salt input and needed service every few years (the salt - usually either NaCl or KCl - is used to "regenerate" the resin inside the units via ion exchange). We've since contracted with Culligan; they swap out cylinders monthly for us now (and "regenerate" them in a central facility). We've been happy with that.

I have heard vague rumors that some cities are now regulating the use of salt in residential water conditioning systems, because they want to limit the amount of saline regeneration-cycle water entering the sewer. I have not looked into this, but I'd advise doing so if you're considering a stand-alone residential system. 

Good luck,

Betina

On 272  Sep 28, 2016, at 10:09 , Dawn, Cara (HQ-RA000) <cara...@nasa.gov> wrote:

Does anyone have information/recommendations on whole house water filters?  I don’t recall seeing a prior discussion, sorry if this is a repeat question.

 

Cara Dawn

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Contract Specialist

NASA Management Office 

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

4800 Oak Grove Drive

Pasadena, CA  91109

(818) 354-6069 

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betina pavri                 cel:  +1.818.653.4719
bet...@jpl.nasa.gov         im: betin...@mac.com

MSL Lead Payload Downlink Coordinator & Instrument Systems Lead

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[Whiffen, Gregory J (392M)]

Hi Cara,

We installed a "Life Source" whole house filter some years ago. It is a giant medical grade activated carbon filter. They claimed 25 year life based on (I'm trying to recall) 25 million gallon throughput. We installed a water meter on it so we could know for sure what the cumulative throughput is. It will remove anything activated carbon will remove (which is not everything bad, but most of the stuff we were worried about). It does not use salt, but does have a weekly backwash cycle that will dump some small amount of water outside (you can choose to pipe it to some plants you want watered as we did). It removes all chlorine from your water, so if ever you taste or smell chlorine again you know there is a problem with the filter. So far it has worked well.

-Greg

[Martinez, Rafael (357E)]

Thanks for the info! How much did it cost roughly? I am also looking into one…

 

From: Betina Pavri [mailto:bet...@jpl.nasa.gov]
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2016 9:17 AM
To: greenclub <gree...@jpl.nasa.gov>
Subject: Re: [greenclub] Whole House Water Filters

 

Hi Cara,

[Betina Pavri]

Hi Rafael,

With regards to the EcoWater system, we installed that 20 years ago - and initially leased it - so I'm not sure what they're charging now for an equivalent unit. I'd guess $400-500, plus you need to fill it with salt occasionally and pay for service now and again. You can buy big bags of salt at OSH, Home Depot, Lowe's etc. We eventually gave up on the unit because its mode of failure was to overflow, wasting water and flooding our garage. In fairness, our water is really hard on any appliance and the unit worked well for years.

For the Culligan cylinder exchange system, it's essentially a subscription service. They come out and install the plumbing to hook up the tanks, and then replace them monthly. The cost depends on how many tanks you need (which is based on your water use). $40-60/mo is probably a good guess for most families. If you go this route, I'd recommend having them install the units on the side of your house, so no one needs to be home for the regular tank exchange.

Good luck,

Betina