Water Filtration Systems

slo007

Hello,

We drink primarily (plastic) bottled water at home... I'm moving to a house in Co. Mayo in the fall and assume the water quality will be reasonable. What would be a good water filtration system that I can put in the house and stop buying water?

I'm looking for something to install under the kitchen sink.

Tazio

I see you got no reply in a few days.. here's my take on it. Firstly I'm not a plumber - but have been exposed to a lot of plumbing due to well water eating everything in our home! learned to plumb out of financial necessity :eek:


Will you be on a private well supply when you move? If so first thing would be to just get a water test done. Contact a local company; they will supply a few little plastic bottles for you to fill. the test is around 100 euro; they will check for chemical (iron / Manganese / pH / nitrates etc) and biological/fecal content. Each value will have a pass/fail limit based on EU guidelines.

Once you have this report then you know how good/bad the water is and can decide what to buy as regards treatment/purification etc.

There are also kits you can but online like these http://safewater.ie/product/10-in-1-water-test-kit/ I have not used these.


If you're on a mains/council supply you could still get a test done for your own benefit. There are 'reverse osmosis' systems you can buy for use under your kitchen sink - Google 'reverse osmosis' units for prices and availability. It's up to you how much to spend etc. i did spend time looking into these but my water is good so decided not to buy one in the end. If you're ok with plumbing in one of these you can save lots of hard earned cash.


I'm on well water system had get the water checked 12 months - it's always been good thankfully just low pH - which ate lots of pipes and tanks... but I just keep on top of that now with bags of "Juraperle". I also put in a UV lamp and 10 micron filter... the water tastes great now.


I wonder if there are more on here who use these under sink units that can give more advice?

laugh

Tazio wrote: »

I also put in a UV lamp and 10 micron filter... the water tastes great now.

What did you buy and did you install them between the pump and the house?

dublinseven2

Hi,

We've had a 2 stage water system in place for a year.

Old well that had a tiny bit of e.coli probs cos it hadn't been used for ages, hard water and quite a lot of iron/manganese.

1/ 5 micron long filter > UV light > softener
2/ 6 stage undersink RO

I changed the 5 micron and UV bulb with associated cleaning / re-greasing. Took a while and a super wrench (lisle 60200), but happy with it.

Got the RO apart and discovered a 5 micron in stage 1, a CTO in stage 2 and a 5 micron in stage 3. Stages 4 to 6 as expected (RO > Post Carbon > re-mineral), but I'm not happy with stages 2 and 3. I replaced the 1-3 filters with what I think is the correct set up i.e. 5 micron > GAC > CTO, then I realised I didn't have the required push connectors for stages 5 and 6.

A few questions if you fancy it?

-How unhappy should I be with the original installer installing 5 micron > CTO > 5 micron?
-Could the original (wrong?) stages 1-3 have damaged the RO membrane (I'm not that up to speed on my GACs v CTOs, Chlorine v Odour) or setup at all (running for a year before I changed them)?
-Will I bother with stages 5 and 6 now (I've ordered the right connectors to change them)? Or, even though they say "change at 6 months", it won't make much difference to the system being after the RO stage 4, and I can just do stages 1,2,3,5 and 6 next year?

I'm happy that I DIYed the first year filter changes. Saved a good chunk of money and discovered what I think is the wrong stages 1-3 thing and I'm pretty sure I've done a more thorough job than anyone else (particularly the original installer) might have been bothered to do...