Whole house water filters connect to the main water line to treat all of your home’s faucets. They are ideal for households on private wells, city water or undergoing hard water treatment.
They remove a variety of contaminants, including sediment, chlorine, copper, iron and organic chemicals. They also remove odors and acidic water.
1. Reduces Odors
Whether your home’s water comes from a public source or your well, it may contain unwanted minerals and contaminants. The resulting bad-tasting and smelling water can interfere with your drinking, cooking and cleaning. A whole house filter removes these impurities, ensuring you have clean, tasty water at every tap in your home.
A basic whole-house system uses a sediment filter to block out particulates. These systems are often less expensive than more sophisticated ones, such as a filtration and softener combination. This type of system removes both hard and soft water contaminants by removing calcium and magnesium ions, which cause limescale buildup in pipes and hot water tanks. It also reduces chlorine, unpleasant odors and VOCs by using a carbon filter.
This system uses a multi-stage filter to remove a wide range of water contaminants including rust, sediment, herbicides, pesticides, chlorine taste and odor, VOCs and industrial solvents. The first stage high-capacity polypropylene sediment filter blocks out solid particles. A second and third stage carbon filter then binds VOCs and metals and converts them into harmless components.
2. Reduces Chlorine
Several different kinds of whole house water filtration systems can be found in the market today. Each of them are designed to eliminate unsightly stains, tastes and smells caused by contaminants like rust, iron and chlorine from the tap water entering your home. These filters can also help remove toxins and chemicals from the water, such as herbicides, pesticides, VOC’s, industrial solvents, arsenic and more.
Water filtration systems for the home are a great investment because they allow you to enjoy clean, healthy, safe water without having to buy and carry multiple water bottles each day. They can also reduce your carbon footprint by eliminating the need for disposable plastic water bottles and will help reduce the risk of disease from carcinogens present in many of our public water sources.
These systems can work by using a variety of different methods such as fine physical barriers, kinetic degradation fluxion, activated carbon and more. They can also be equipped with other features such as a salt system that uses sodium molecules to bind with hard metals in your pipes and hot water tank, making them soluble.
3. Reduces Iron
A whole-house water filter that reduces iron helps prevent damage to your home plumbing. It keeps rust from building up inside your pipes and can keep clogging from happening to your showers, washing machines, and dishwashers.
Iron can create a bad odor, stain clothes and fixtures, and cause other negative effects in your well water. A whole-house water filter that reduces rust eliminates these issues by eliminating iron, hydrogen sulfide, and manganese from your well water.
To reduce ferrous iron, a whole-house water filtration system will use an air injection oxidation process that uses compressed air to oxidize the water and then filters it through a carbon bed to remove the insoluble form of iron. Other methods of removing ferrous iron include aeration and chlorine injection, but these require pre-oxidation of the water.
If you’re looking for a low-maintenance way to remove iron from your water, consider a double vortex backwash system that eliminates the need for hydrogen peroxide or salt. This type of system also removes the impurities that often accompany iron, such as bacteria, manganese, and sulfur.
4. Reduces Sediment
Whole-house filters work in multiple phases to remove contaminants from your water supply. They use cartridges that can target organic matter, pesticides, chlorine, unnatural tastes and odors, iron, bacteria, algae, rust and more. These contaminants can damage your plumbing infrastructure. They may corrode pipes or leave behind difficult-to-clean deposits and stains on household appliances like your water heater and faucets.
Depending on the type of filter you choose, your system can also reduce harmful contaminants like heavy metals and minerals from your water. This can prevent damage to your plumbing and extend the life of appliances that use water.
For example, a SpringWell whole-house water filtration system uses a multi-stage filtration process to remove sediment, rust, iron and hydrogen sulfide from your water. This system’s filter is one-of-a-kind and can be changed without breaking a sweat, even with the system fully on. To change the filter, turn off the water to your house using the building control valve and close nearby taps. Place a bucket under or near the filter to catch the water that will spill out, and unscrew the old filter from the cartridge housing.
5. Reduces Metals
A whole-house water filtration system ensures the quality of your home’s entire supply of water. This means that your coffee brews in clean, healthy water and your showers are free of harmful impurities that could otherwise build up in your pipes.
Whole house filters reduce iron, manganese and other metallic elements that leach from rocks and soil. These impurities can cause unpleasant odors, discolored water and rusty-brown or black stains on fixtures and appliances. They can also leave behind rusty-brown or black flakes in your laundry, affect the taste of your drinking water and form hard deposits in your water heater and pressure tank. These same minerals can also contain hydrogen sulfide, which gives off a rotten egg smell and causes gagging and nausea in some people.
Different contaminants require different types of filters, so the specific type of filter you’ll need depends on what your home’s water test results show. Your local Culligan Water expert can help you choose the right filter to address your home’s unique water quality issues.