Water Test Results
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Traderfjp
Member
Cool. Thanks for all the great info. from everyone. I'm going to look into the anode rods you are talking about. They are always fun to change but my heaters are fairly new so I don't think it will be bad. I read that it's a bad idea to use carbon filters unless you use it with chlorine since the cabon is a harbor for bacteria growth. I guess I'll just run it as is and use an RO system for making tea, coffee, etc.
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ditttohead
Water systems designer, R&D
It is a lot more complex than that simplified statement.
Would you rather have a tiny bit of bacteria in the water (natural and normal) or chlorine, organic chemicals, etc? When a carbon tank is installed, the household plumbing should be sanitized on occasion. Almost anything can harbor bacteria, and when you figure the vast majority of private wells are not chlorinated...
This is about a 4 hour classroom session to get through even the most basics on this topic.
Would you rather have a tiny bit of bacteria in the water (natural and normal) or chlorine, organic chemicals, etc? When a carbon tank is installed, the household plumbing should be sanitized on occasion. Almost anything can harbor bacteria, and when you figure the vast majority of private wells are not chlorinated...
This is about a 4 hour classroom session to get through even the most basics on this topic.
Traderfjp
Member
Love to take that course. The article was saying that the chlorinated water enters the carbon bed and kills any bacteria present and then gets filtered out. It went on to say that without chlorine or I guess ozonated water the carbon can breed bacteria. If there are no pesticides, or inorganic in the water or other nasties than a carbon filter might cause more harm than help. I'm not a pro so I don't know but if you are telling me that in your experience you have installed dozens of carbon filters without the water being sanitized first and there was never a problem then I believe you.
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ditttohead
Water systems designer, R&D
Dozens.. lol, maybe closer to tens of thousands. 30 years of field experience and working for many of the largest water companies as a consultant, adviser and much more, I am fairly safe in saying that when it is done properly it is usually very safe. Almost every water filter in a restaurant, cooler, RO etc include carbon filters. It is one of the oldest water filtration technologies and by far the most common (other than some form of sediment filtration obviously).
Carbon can absolutely harbor bacteria and we do regular testing of water for biological issues. We even have a small incubator to help speed up the testing process at our facility. We do see a few contaminated carbon beds every year but they are usually due to poor startup procedures or impropely sanitized buildings, dead legs etc. Here is a short article I wrote on the topic a while back.
https://view.publitas.com/impact-water-products/2018-catalog-final/page/282-283
Carbon can absolutely harbor bacteria and we do regular testing of water for biological issues. We even have a small incubator to help speed up the testing process at our facility. We do see a few contaminated carbon beds every year but they are usually due to poor startup procedures or impropely sanitized buildings, dead legs etc. Here is a short article I wrote on the topic a while back.
https://view.publitas.com/impact-water-products/2018-catalog-final/page/282-283
Traderfjp
Member
That was an interesting article on bacteria. Good to know that Coliform will not make you sick. Learned something. It's nice that you are on this forum helping people. I see you are out of Ontario. That is one of my favorite cities. I guess I have a question for you. My water is pretty good but according to the Langlier index calculator my water is fairly corrosive. I have only 2.45 mg/l of ca and my Langlier index is over -3 but if I add 60 mg/l to the equation the Langlier index goes all the way down to 1.8 which is almost half. While it is still considered moderately corrosive wouldn't the ca add buffering to the water to help keep the ph more stable and to remove some of the corrosive nature of the water. If I added 900 mg/l then I can get the water to neutral. So will ca change the taste of the water and how much ca does a PH neutralizer add to the water if you say want to raise the ph from 6.5 to 7.2?
Traderfjp
Member
I guess you have a chlorine chemical feed setup. Why are you running chlorine? Are you trying to oxidize metals so they can be filtered out? Is it to keep bacteria out of your lines that don't get used a lot?
Traderfjp
Member
I forgot to ask why would u pull the pump?
It came with the system, and I followed the directions. It was recommeded by a friend who had been running the same system. I add a gallon of bleach to the solution tank and top off with soft water every 33 days.
I have wondered what the purpose is -- oxidize something from the media, or to keep stuff from growing? Both? Hey, it works for me.
The controller draws the bleach solution with the same method (venturi pump called an injector) that a softener uses to draw brine. But my brine draw cycle is much shorter: 4 minutes. During that time, it draws about 1.3 gallons from the tank.
A pump gets pulled when it needs work or changing. Mine was pulled when I had the pit demolished. I had them put the 12 year old pump (13 year old date code) back.
I may sanitize more often than that. That would be every 20 years maybe. I may sanitize every 3 years or whatever it takes for me to detect something. My water is different from yours. My well produces some H2S and iron. So I may do things more frequently. If I had symptoms, I would go sooner. If I never had a symptom, then when the pump gets pulled would be good. I don't pull my own pump.
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Traderfjp
Member
Do you polish the water and remove the chlorine with a carbon filter?
The chlorine injection is followed by a 6 minute rapid rinse, which washes the chlorine out of the drain. Then the unit is put back into service. No detectable chlorine in the service water.
Traderfjp
Member
OH. I guess you just use the Chlorine to backwash your carbon filter? Having a hard time picturing your setup.
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LLigetfa
DIYer, not in the trades
Maybe I'm confused about how a carbon filter removes chlorine. I thought the carbon media eventually gets depleted when removing the chlorine so then repeatedly backwashing with additional chlorine would just shorten its service life. Am I wrong?
Traderfjp
Member
Interesting. Now I can picture it thanks to the picture you provided (hehe). I'm thinking the flow from the backwash creates a venture that pulls the solution into the tank? Are you running any other filters or just carbon? can you use the chlorine to clean your home plumbing lines too.
Traderfjp
Member
I think the carbon is re-generated when you backwash. The chlorine is to keep bacteria from growing. Me thinks
I don't know. I have wondered the same thing for those who are removing chlorine. I guess GAC adsorbs. Does catalytic carbon adsorb? I know that catalytic carbon is used with chloromine. Does that work totally differently, or slightly differently? And is Centaur Carbon that different from generic "catalyic carbon" or is it just a quality difference?
My filter removes H2S and iron (and arsenic, as it happens). If chlorine is adsorbed, and a ferrous ion comes by, does it react with the ion to make a ferric something? In that case, that chlorine will no longer be adsorbed I would think. I am speculating, and not claiming to be reporting facts on how it does what it does. The fact is that it works for me with my water. It would be nice if I knew definitively how it worked, but it is not necessary. I set a calendar reminder to fill the solution tank every 33 days. I remember to buy a couple bottles of bleach on occasion.
They say to expect about 8 years from my media. I am 5.5 years into mine so far. If it stops working, I was wondering if I should try to use a newer miracle media instead of CC? At this point I am thinking I would go with Centaur Carbon again.
Traderfjp
Member
Usually how it works is that the water is chlorinated to sanitize the water and to oxidize any metals in the water. Then once the metals, etc. are oxidized it gets filtered out and then sometimes the water goes into a softener. I'm not sure about the different types of carbon but catalytic carbon is processed a little differently than normal carbon so it removes more inorganics from the water. I think all carbon filters are pretty similar in how they work. They are like magnets for inorganic material. The real voodoo science, imho, is how to remediate problems and understanding water chemistry.
If that were correct, the "catalytic" part of the name would be untrue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_Science Voodoo science may mean different things to different people. To me if somebody has a thought that that little blue gremlins in a media grab the contaminates and that theory leads to a media that removes the contaminates, I am OK with that. If a science cannot make independently verifiable predictions, I would use a term like junk science. If it makes predictions that happen and are independently verifiable to happen, maybe we could have a positive name for that. An extreme is gravity. We don't know how it works, but we don't have a problem with Kepler's laws of motion. We call that part Newtonian physics. Sorry for rambling.
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