Recommendations and experience sought- a whole house water filter.

John Galt

John Galt

Joined
Dec 7, 2021
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I recently had a Navien NCB-250/150H combi boiler + continuous hot water system installed and the literature says that the hot water maker plate and frame style heat exchanger is susceptible to plugging. I want to get a whole house water filter system installed to remove the dirt/scale that the town stirs up during its quarterly flushing of the street water mains. I have made a few calls and everyone wants to sell me a water softener system which I don’t want or need.

Does anyone here have experience with a whole house water filter (not a water softener) and can give me some manufacturer and capacity recommendations. Single family home, two bathrooms + kitchen and laundry. I would be doing the filter changes myself.
 
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I have a whole house filter on our well inlet.

It's a standard piece from Lowe's

When we installed it, we put the filter in a bypass so that I could fully isolate the filter at change times, but still have running water to clean out the sediment and such.

1BDC6335-68F7-4DF7-8C0D-1111537D0C06.jpeg
 
I have no clue if a water filter filters out the chemicals added to the water by the water company to protect the waterlines in the water system from corrosion.
This is what typically clogs up the heat exchanger tubes in a tankless water heater and need to be cleaned out every year to five years depending on your public water system.
Of course, another possibility is overall hard water containing a lot of minerals, which can build up scale.
It really depends on the composition of your water and what your water company adds it’s to the water
 
John Galt said:
I recently had a Navien NCB-250/150H combi boiler + continuous hot water system installed and the literature says that the hot water maker plate and frame style heat exchanger is susceptible to plugging. I want to get a whole house water filter system installed to remove the dirt/scale that the town stirs up during its quarterly flushing of the street water mains. I have made a few calls and everyone wants to sell me a water softener system which I don’t want or need.

Does anyone here have experience with a whole house water filter (not a water softener) and can give me some manufacturer and capacity recommendations. Single family home, two bathrooms + kitchen and laundry. I would be doing the filter changes myself.
Click to expand...
Pretty much any basic dirt and sediment filter will take out silt and grit but not anything like calcium hardness or iron. I recommend at a minimum a filter housing that will accomodate a 4"x10" filter cartridge. A cartridge of 20 microns is usually good. If you live in an area with high hardness levels you may want to consider a water softener, however I would just flush out the unit every two years rather than deal with a softener. The one pictured above from Lowes is a good choice.
 
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I had a whole house filter in an older house I no longer live at. The house had a well so the circumstances are different. The filter looked like an upright oxygen gas tank.

In our case the water had to be tested first to determine the contaminants and then match the filter to the purpose. Our water had high iron and manganese so we had a filter that was gravel with a sacrificial media mixed in which was limestone. The filter would automatically flush itself at regular intervals and about twice a year I had to add more limestone and mix it.

A filter company like Culligan for example will sell you a filter but I would wonder about overselling.
 
I'm a bit rusty on water filter brands. I would spend time over at the Terry Love forum to get up to speed. My preference would be a known brand like Pentair/Pentek to attempt to assure quality control and parts availability.

As much as I love the clear filter housings, I "think" the pros at Terry Love like the opaque, solid plastic ones better. BE WARNED: It's recommended to replace the clear housings every 5 to 10 years (check filter brand) because the plastic can become brittle and crack. I had one break at my workplace last year when we got a huge water pressure spike. It was not pretty.

"CAUTION: To prevent costly repairs or possible water damage the sump of plastic housings must be replaced every five
years for clear, and ten years for opaque. If sump is older than recommended, replace immediately. Date sump for reference
and indicate replacement date." https://assets.freshwatersystems.com/image/upload/s--KsqmBc4U--/fzvg5efgdt41zlusfja1.pdf
 
walterjay said:
Stay away from Culligan, Rainsoft and other large national companies. High priced and pressure selling. Go with a smaller local company.
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I'd stay away from all of them- the industry is a "tin man" industry.

Terry Love, as mentioned, has great information.

A few notes, a filter for whole house use, other than a sentiment filter is very expensive and likely will clog if there are things in the water outside of sentiment to remove.

My recommendation, a Water Boss water softener. Water Boss softeners have a built in sentiment filter, that cleans itself during the softeners backwash/ regeneration process. Water Boss can be purchased at Home Depot or Menards. Water Boss is manufactured in Ohio.

Finally, if installing a filter and/ or softener, the key to the installation is plenty of bypass valves. One should be able to isolate a softener/ filter, while still having water running through the house.
 
A whole house filter isn't rocket science. They are all pretty much the same. It goes to a filter and out comes filtered water. The most basic one is a single filter. But then there are multiple filter whole house filter.

Choosing a filter is based on your needs.

A woven filter is good to 35 microns and lasts a long time. It's a good filter if you're using a well. (since you're not....)
1682540998492.jpg


There's sediment filters that go down to 20 microns, looking like a giant oil filter

1682541093106.jpg


There's also 5 micron filters with carbon activated filtration for chemicals in the water that will improve taste.

1682541192671.jpg


It's best to put a whole house filter after the water source, so filtered water gets to the appliances, like your hot water heater, etc.
 
if you get what racer12306 sugested (I have a similar 5 x 10 ge unit from 2008)
this is the best filter I have found for drinking water
www.kleenwater.com

Watershed4510 Hybrid Pleated / Carbon Block Whole House Filter

One KleenWater Watershed-4510 Hybrid Pleated / Carbon Block Whole House Water Filters - 4.5 x 9.75 - Dirt, Rust, Sediment, Chlorine, Cysts and More
www.kleenwater.com www.kleenwater.com
It even keeps the tank for the toilet clean inside.
And the inlet valves for the washer no longer need to be replaced.
The flow rate is also very good.
But if your just doing the hot water a less expensive filter element might be better.
 
SaintElmo said:
if you get what racer12306 sugested (I have a similar 5 x 10 ge unit from 2008)
this is the best filter I have found for drinking water
www.kleenwater.com

Watershed4510 Hybrid Pleated / Carbon Block Whole House Filter

One KleenWater Watershed-4510 Hybrid Pleated / Carbon Block Whole House Water Filters - 4.5 x 9.75 - Dirt, Rust, Sediment, Chlorine, Cysts and More
www.kleenwater.com www.kleenwater.com
It even keeps the tank for the toilet clean inside.
And the inlet valves for the washer no longer need to be replaced.
The flow rate is also very good.
But if your just doing the hot water a less expensive filter element might be better.
Click to expand...
Issue with a filter of that nature is they clog very quickly. They work great, but the filters are pricey and may need to be replaced in just days based on water usage and water contaminants, when used as a whole house filter. A filter of this nature also can reduce water flow.
 
All great suggestions. I agree that the installers I have called appear to have no interest since I don’t want/need a water conditioner system so there is no follow up service agreements etc. It is a one and done job.

It looks like a straight forward, do it yourself install. Anyone have experience with 3/4 inch shark bite fittings and valves on copper pipe?

The water in my town is well water from four wells drilled over 500 feet down. The sediment is due to a 80ish year old storage tank that was fed for decades from well pumps without discharge filters. That issue has been resolved but there is still residual dirt in the tank and the underground pipes that gets stirred up. After the quarterly flush done by the town water department it usually takes about 5-10 seconds to flush the dirty water out of the line from the street main to my house, then it is back to being crystal clear until the next quarterly flush. We don’t even have filters on the ice maker and drink straight unfiltered tap water.
 
I'm on a well and we used to get a lot of sand in our water. I have two of the generic HD/Lowes/Sears filters as shown above. They both work fine and replacement filter elements are cheap and readily available, but I usually just take mine out and wash them off and reuse them.

Also somebody forget to tell me that you're supposed to replace the entire filter every five years. Both of mine have been installed and working for well over 35 years.

"It's best to put a whole house filter after the water source, so filtered water gets to the appliances, like your hot water heater, etc."

Ditto. Sand in our water would cause the toilet valves to leak and on occasion, block the washng machine selinoid valve it open and that water would not shut up and would overflow the washing machine. I put in a whole house filter and a 2nd filter directly at the washing machine water connection (cold water side only). I also cut a section out of a garden hose and installed a 3rd filter inline on it and I use that hose for things like washing cars where I don't want to get any fine sand in the wash/rinse water. Even though I have the whole house filter, there was sand in the plumbing system and it took several years to get most of it out so the washing machine filter WAS necessary but I haven't had to clean it in at least five years.
 
If you search "home water supply filter" on Amazon, you will find numerous water supply filters with transparent bodies that unscrew, allowing the homeowner to change internal filter cartridges. They are common on homes that have wells as their water supply. Here is one example from Amazon. You will need the filter, and two block valves to isolate the filter from the water supply side and the house side for when you need to change the filter element.

Be sure, before you isolate the filter for service, that you have a bucket of water to clean sediment out of the transparent cylinder.

 
Some have transparent bodies and some don't. They both work equally well and last just as long from my experience. Just be sure that the filter setup that you get uses standard size filters and not some oddball size. Another advantage of using the standard size filters is that there is a wide variety of filter materials (charcoal, paper, string, etc).

My whole house filter is outside of the house so I added a faucet on the supply side just below the filter so that I always have water available for cleaning the filter element, even when the filter is cut off and is disassembled. In my setup the pipe on the outside of the filter outlet goes up and then makes a right hand turn. But instead of using a standard 90 degree elbow, I installed a sideways pipe T with one leg pointing straight up. I put about 18" of pipe on that leg and simply capped it off so that it becomes an air trap. Any air that gets into the filter when I clean it goes up into that trap instead of into the household plumbing system. If any air gets into the household plumbing it makes the faucets spit water out when the air pocket reaches the faucet so the air trap prevents that. If you have trouble with air getting into the plumbing system and making the faucets spit, then run a shower or a toilet before using the faucets so that the air pockets vent through those and where they won't create a mess.

I turn off all of the water powered devices in my home before I change the filter so there's no water flow and I don't have a bypass valve in my system. Just a cut off valve on the filter intake and outlet. The air trap described above actually holds a bit of water and acts like miniture captive air tank so my household water system actually stays pressurized while I change the filter. My filter housing does have a button on the top of the housing that vents it. After I change the filter element and reassemble the filter, I turn on the supply side valve and then press and hold the button for a few seconds and most of the air that's trapped in the filter is vented to the outside. Once I get a steady flow of water I release the button and then turn on the outlet valve. A very small amount of air is usually trapped below the outlet valve but almost all of that goes up into the air trap and not into the household water system.
 
This is the industry standard for homes with wells. You can use either a sediment or a drinking water quality carbon filter in the housing. It can be purchased at plumbing/water parts wholesale supplier house that sells to the industry professionals. Not Home Depot, or Lowes. You will want the same size inlet/outlet as your main water supply line. They range from 3/4" to 1 1/2". I have 1" on both of my homes. I have the 5000 model, flows like 40gpm I think, the 10000 is way overkill! It does not flow any more, just has more capture capacity if you have an extreme amount of sediment in your water, but it sounds like that's not really an issue for you. When changing the filters, I would strongly suggest using just a little Vaseline on the rubber Oring to help it seat properly, and I would also always keep an extra filter and an Oring.

Filter Housings

www.watts.com www.watts.com
 
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