Looking for high flow low maintenance whole house descaling + filter

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Ben H

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Our city water is quite good and quite soft but it does get chlorine added and there is still scale. I'd like to install a whole house system in a new home to protect appliances from the scale and remove the chlorine but not at the cost of dropping water pressure. My thought so far was to use a 1"-1.5" inlet SS housing from 3M along with AP420 cartridges. The multi-cartridge housings look like they have sufficient flow and these cartridges appear reasonably priced. I've also seen the enormous EWS units that are far more expensive but of course last 10 years. Can anyone recommend a pragmatic setup to do basic filtration/treatment duties ?
 

Bannerman

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Post a link to your city's water quality report. If you don't know the water's composition, you're then only guessing at what you are attempting to filter out and can't determine the most effective treatment methods.

A Hach 5B Total Hardness test kit is a reliable and accurate method to establish your water's hardness at your specific location. The hardness quantity in a city distribution system can vary depending on your proximity to each water source, city usage patterns throughout the day, maintenance routines etc.

Cartridge filters typically do not provide enough surface area for point of entry use and as such, are better suited for point of use applications. As such, they may not adequately reduce whatever it is you are attempting to remove at the flow rate needed. Even if effective, they usually require frequent maintenance and replacement.
 

Reach4

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You would also want to know whether your city uses chlorine or chloramines. Chloramines are harder to remove.
 

Ben H

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Thanks all. Pretty sure Bend, OR uses Chlorine. The water her is not hard (granted I haven't tested our new home as it's not built yet) but we do get scale just the same so I think if you measure it on the standard scales, the high side of the range according to the city is 1.46 grains per gallon. There are quite a few breweries here just for the water quality.

Good to know on the cartridges. I thought that the systems promising 20+ GPM would be sufficient. I see 3M has stainless housings that take 2-4 10" stacked filters. The big downflow setups are $3k and say they lst 10 years. The most intimidating part was the man sized units.
 

Bannerman

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If your main concern is chlorine, then a point of entry Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) filter should be effective. That will be a water softener sized tank, which may or may not utilize a back-washing control valve.

Non back-washing carbon tanks are typically set-up as an up-flow filter whereas a back-washing controller will be superior due to down-flow filtration while also providing periodic reclassification of the media and elimination of sediment and debris to drain. Media that is not reclassified, can eventually develop 'channels' which means an easier flow path through the media, thereby resulting in normal water flows having limited media contact.

A tank (10" X 54") containing 1.5 cuft of carbon media is suitable for most average homes, but a smaller or larger tank and media quantity could be used.

There maybe other contaminants which you would also wish to also reduce, but without knowing what or how much ...
 

Ben H

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Thanks, are t here any manufacturers you would recommend for one with backwashing ?
 

ditttohead

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You say you want to reduce scale. The AP420 is not really well suited for your application. It is simply a polyphosphate/sediment filter combo. It works well on ice makers but for whole house residential applications... far from ideal. For whole house scale reduction the only technology that is proven time and again is a simple traditional softener. Other technologies simply don't match up no matter what the marketing literature says. For whole house chlorine reduction a properly sized backwashing carbon tank is the proper way to go.

Edited,

I missed the note on <2 GPG hardness. Post the city water report and pay special attention to silica. Silica can seem very much like hardness but instead of it being easily removed with a simple acid solution, it barely reacts and is nearly permanent.
 
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ditttohead

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Your water looks excellent, a little bit of hardness. Barely worth treating but even small amounts of hardness will cause some scale. How bad is the scale? Is it bad enough to install and maintain a softener? Too bad they didn't post the silica results.
 

Ben H

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Yeah, I hear we have great water. Maybe it's not worth treating. My intent was more to protect appliances and perhaps remove any added chlorine. Maybe I should just get a point filter for the coffee machine and call it a day.
 

Reach4

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Yeah, I hear we have great water. Maybe it's not worth treating. My intent was more to protect appliances and perhaps remove any added chlorine. Maybe I should just get a point filter for the coffee machine and call it a day.
Saeco? You can tell the coffee maker that your hardness is low, so it won't turn on the light so often.
 

Ben H

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Here's our shower head. It's by no means awful, just an example.
 

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Ben H

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No, not a Saeco. Most a classic manual machine. It's not even having trouble per se, I just wanted to keep it from needing any maintenance.
 

Reach4

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