Whole house water filters?

Hi Gary,

I do appreciate your knowledge and experience. I am here to learn
something new but I am also an engineer and I do trust instruments
and measurements. I took three samples of water and measured Ph
and TDS with the same instruments. There is definitely a Ph and TDS
(they are somewhat related to each other) reduction after each filter. My “whole house filter†is actually two stages filter – paper and carbon.
Yes, paper filter does not remove any dissolved particles (it actually
removes particles, bigger then 5 microns in size and this must have
some effect on TDS reading) but carbon filter does (this is carbon/kfc
combined cartridge).

You said, my RO system already contaminated.
Contaminated with what?
Are you talking about bacterial contamination because of a
“whole house filter†is in front of RO?
Before my current installation I had a single stage under sink carbon filter
for many years (of cause cartridge was replaced once a year) and I did
not notice any evidence of bacteria growth. As you mentioned yourself,
RO filtration system has carbon and sediment cartridges before the
membrane. So, if carbon cartridge can introduce a bacterial problem
(and yes, unfortunately sometime it does) then the same problem still will
be there but localized just to drinking water instead of spreading across
the entire plumbing system. Of course, this is not good and if it will happened
then I’ll add UV disinfector – much better then very toxic and poison chlorine
which must be removed (I did a lot of research) before water is actually
used. These days toxic and poison chlorine must not be used in a first
place for water treatment. Unfortunately all alternatives are more
expensive and required big $$$ investments but this is different story.

- Vitaliy

Water

We're really blowing this topic way out of perportion.
I like what Gary says. It's simple.... I like Mark's comment too.

master plumber mark said:

I am asking GARY, because even though he sells stuff on
the internet, and everyone seems to think he has some sort of
evil plan and adgenda to rule the world....

he still knows what he is talking about...

the carbon filters VS just a plain old water conditoner....

give me the pros and cons here......I need the education

Gary, please if you got the time...


ps ...I just spent my evening cleaning out a
house where an Autotrol WS decided to blow a gasket
and fill the plumbing with resin. Just got home at 9.30 est.

Click to expand...

Really there is little comparison. Carbon removes taste and odor and a softner exchanges ions that cause probems with sodium or potassium ions BUT... A 'conditioner' has more than resin in it. Usually they will have resin and carbon. Which is a bad idea because resin rarely needs replacing in such a short time as carbon does. And to get rid of the spent carbon, you usually have to replace the resin too. Plus most waters contain bacteria, and bacteria LUV to live and multiply in it. I hope that helps.

I suspect many old Autotrol softeners and filters, say 20 years old or more, will have leaks caused by chlorine and now chlormines attacking their orings. Autotrol has a lot of orings! Ever take a top module off any of them? There are 6-8 orings sealing the top to the middle module alone, and there is the base yet. Fleck and Clack control valves don't have those problems.

Gary
Quality Water Associates

ps Thanks for your support.

"I had an Autotrol today blow an O-ring out where it connects to the tank. Was shooting water for 9 hours and shot a hole through a drywall wall and destroyed someone's computer."

What with your bad back and you hobbling around'n all, you know that with you being 6' 8" and 360, you shouldn't be to leaning on things...

You sure it wasn't the tank thread part.

Gary
Quality Water Associates

Vitaliy,

I have a fair amount of experience in trying to convince engineers of 'things'! Like pH and TDS having much to do with each other. Example, RO and distilled waters have a very low TDS content but a pH of neutral 7.0+/-; I think you demonstrated that in your test results no? If not test for me and see. Then convince me that a pleated paper, string wound, or spun sediment cartridge reduces pH. Now possibly a carbon carbon may.

About the contaminating the RO. If you need a UV, by the time you realize that, the bacteria has contaminated your RO; both filters and membrane. Bacteria go right through your prefilter cartridges and all it takes is for one to get half through the membrane and your storage tank is contaminated too, along with any final stage inline carbon filter on the line to the faucet. RO cannot be used for bacteria filtration, regardless what consumers and some people in the water treatment business say.

Gary
Quality Water Associates

If you didn't want a comment on your service call, why post about it?

Actually my reply was supposed to be a funny. And I still think it was and is. LOL

But since you took it seriously, let's look at what you say negatively about me over the last few months since you started to post here. You'll see many more posts from you about me than me posting about you. And I've posted here for years. What's with that, you can give it but can't take it when you're on the other end?

I'll make you an offer, stop your personal and negative replies to and about me and skip reading my posts. I bet we get along just fine.

Also. you don't see or hear about me going to Terry, or HJ, or jimbo etc. about you. Aren't you big enough to take care of yourself! I think that's funny too. LOL

As to who you are, I've had your replies like these in this thread to me for over two years as of last month. I have some of them along with a few emails about you from webmasters etc. quoting what you've said to them, and what and how you say it here is all but verbatim to those previous posts on those other sites you keep mentioning you got me banned from.

Anyone wanting copies, let me know, I have a folder full.

Terry, after reading this, I'm all for you deleting it and I'm sorry for the need to defend myself but I think it's necessary rather than me letting his personal negativism to continue.

Gary
Quality Water Associates

gary, what is your evil agenda???

I am trying to figure out what your
evil adgenda is >>??? selling water conditioniers??

Are you planning on
overthrowing Terry as owner of this web site????

Is that it,??? --GOTCHA !!

are you trying to corner the water conditioner market???
thats doubtful.

What did you do some time in the past that has
caused all this animonisity???

Inquireing minds want to know..................
-------------------------------------------------------

Did you sell defective products to someone on this site???

Have you sold good quality products to someone that has
visited this site???

And if you have committed this terrible-- horrible crime,
WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THE PROBLEM WITH DOING THIS???

did you put a gun to their heads and force them to buy a
water conditioner from you over the internet????

is everyone concerned because you arent collecting TAXES on
what you sell???



Maybe you took their money and not send them the product??


I simply dont understand what all this SNOTTY BICKERING is all about


GARY---
You have my personal permission to
Go ahead and sell your water condtioners to someone in
Moose Head Montanna , Florida, whenever or whereever you
want to or anywhere else in the USA
what the hell do I care?? Even in Indianapolis .....its OK WITH ME.

I dont give a damn.

Questions for Gary

Hi Gary,

As I said, I am not an expert in plumbing and/or water treatment area.
As far as my measurements – so far they are very consistent.
I am 100%+ agree with you that paper filter cannot remove any chemicals
and/or dissolved particles (and I did not say this, did I?). Carbon filter can
and does remove some chemicals, including very toxic and poison chlorine.
I will be very glad if you can provide/post reasonable professional
interpretation of my results. Whatever they are, they are reality.
I did a lot of research about different filters. I learned a lot of good things
about RO and GAC filters. One of the potential problem with whole house
GAC is a possibility of bacterial contamination. But this is a “possibilityâ€
which means it may or may not be a case. I really would like to get rid
entirely of that chlorine (why I want to do this is a different story) in my
plumbing system. Now I have a couple questions to you and would like to
hear a professional advice:
- Should I immediately add a UV stage?
- If “yes†could you please, recommend one?
- Should I just replace GAC with different cartridge?
- If ‘yes†which one is good?
- Should I simply remove GAC and let RO and “shower head†filters do
the job alone?
- What will be your recommendation(s) for “whole house†water
treatment/filtration?

Thank you,

- Vitaliy

No to adding a UV, you have no need for one.

"Should I simply remove GAC and let RO and “shower head†filters do
the job alone?" Yes, that's what I'd do and suggst to anyone wanting my opinion.

Then change your sediment and GAC RO prefilters and post inline filter if any, every 6 months and sanitize their housings/sumps. That will help keep bacteria growth down as best as possible. When you replace the membrane, sanitize the whole system housing/sumps and tank and all tubing by putting a capful of bleach in each and filling the tank and to the faucet. Then let sit for an hour or so and empty the bleach water and then flush every thing out and put your filters and membrane in.

When you were doing your research, you should have leraned that the number one cause of membrane failure is bacterial growth....

Your RO is working as it should. You're in good shape. The sediment "whole house" cartridge should be changed based on a 15 psi pressure drop across it. To see that, you'd need to add two pressure gauges, one before and one after the housing. The pressure drop is dynamic pressure, full flow peak demand.

Gary
Quality Water Associates

master plumber mark said:

I am trying to figure out what your
evil adgenda is >>??? selling water conditioniers??

Are you planning on
overthrowing Terry as owner of this web site????

What did you do some time in the past that has
caused all this animonisity???

And if you have committed this terrible-- horrible crime,
WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THE PROBLEM WITH DOING THIS???

I simply dont understand what all this SNOTTY BICKERING is all about

GARY---
You have my personal permission to
Go ahead and sell your water condtioners to someone in
Moose Head Montanna , Florida, whenever or whereever you
want to or anywhere else in the USA
what the hell do I care?? Even in Indianapolis .....its OK WITH ME.

I dont give a damn.

Click to expand...

I've been posting on Terry's forums here for years. I've never had any problems with anyone until now with rugged and justalurker.

I have helped many people all over the internet since Jan 1997 and people look me up and post questions wherever I post. IOWs, I bring a fair amount of traffic to any forum I post in. The sites that rugged says he got me banned from, there is a Filters and Conditioners forum at doityourself.com that is dying since I don't post there. And frankly, Terry should benefit from my posting here because in many cases these people are DIYers that may buy something from him. IMO they should because he certainly knows his 'stuff'.

Rugged is DUNBAR or DUNBAR PLUMBER on other sites and we've had numerous disagreements over correct information over the last two years since he started posting on the internet (8/2003). If he says (again) that he's not DUNBAR PLUMBER, ask him for his IP address and I'll prove who he is.

Frankly he gives bad advice and in many cases with water treatment and pumps, wrong advice that can cause a guy problems or a lot of money. When I reply with information that corrects his, he takes it personal and has since day one. This thread is a prime example and there are others on the site.

He is trying to maintain or protect his image so that prospective customers in his service area will use his services. His web site says that he replies to people in his area, upper KY and the Cincinnati area of OH. It's www.dunbarplumbing.com He has links to a number of forums he posts in and/or is a moderator of; except Terry's... And THEN he accuses me of advertising because of my use of a tag line that I've used for many years; Gary Quality Water Associates. And he complains when I tell someone to search for something that brings up my web site although there are many others in the results also.

My tag line is to say I'm a professional, rather than your average usenet or web site forum posting DIYer, or frankly a plumber that doesn't know this stuff as well as a water treatment or pump contractor guy does. Tag lines (and signatures) are from the old time DOS BBS days, the predecessor of usenet newsgroups and forums on web sites. I've been using computers since 1982.

I don't do local business. I have not advertised my "company" as he calls it, for roughly 2.5 years now. I do internet sales of water treatment equipment. He accuses me of 'selling' and "advertising" wherever I post, and he's used that to get me banned on other sites. Well I do a lot of pump and well posts too, but as yet I don't sell pumps over the internet and I've never done plumbing except to install whatever I've sold.

Justalurker is a customer of mine. His softener is working very well (so he says) and has been since July/Aug 2004 when he bought it. You can read on my forum on my web site where he says that just two weeks ago and that he'd buy from me again. The thread is "So everyone has both sides". I won't sell anything to him though, he's a PIA whinny knows everything type customer. He is upset with me for the same reason rugged is; I corrected him when he was telling my customers and all others that read the forum that I was wrong about having to increase the salt dose by up to 30% when substituting potassium for sodium chloride when my salt dose was less than 6 lbs/cuft of resin. He provided me 24 jpg files that prove I'm right. He then deleted all the text in his posts and replaced it with 'nevermind'. I said he disrupted my forum and he wrote me an email telling me to not comment publicly about his actions, that I should have emailed him. I disagreed and he emailed me again (at 12 or 1:30 AM) and I didn't reply soon enough I guess because that afternoon, he pasted the email in a post on my forum. So I did the same with my email reply I was typing to him when I saw that he did that. That was on a Sunday BTW. My post has his email address in it and that is what he is upset with me about. Then he called the next Friday and I paid ($.07/min) for a 1 hour and 32 minute phone call on my 800 number to listen to him whine and deny any responsibility in the problem. Now he follows me around and posts how no one should buy from me on'n on. I think he saw rugged doing it and getting away with it and decided he'd follow suit. I decided enough is enough and replied.

So that's the history and reasons for this as I see them.

Correction, in checking my accuracy, RUGGED/DUNBAR/DUNBAR PLUMBER has removed the Cincinnati OH part from his web site. Just the other day here he mentioned OH though...

Gary
Quality Water Associates