The idea behind whole house water purification is to place a filter system on the cold water supply as soon as possible after it enters your home. This way you will have contaminant-free water in your kitchen, the showers, all over, even for the dishwasher and for washing clothes. In this article we will discuss what needs to be removed from your water, how these systems clean it out and what system would be the best for you.
1. What should a good home water purifier do?
It should take polluted water and give you back good, clean, healthy water. A good whole house water purifier will remove over ninety-nine percent of the harmful contaminants from the water. Contaminants like chlorine, the deadly chlorine byproducts (THMs), synthetic organic chemicals (SOCs), herbicides, lead, legal and illegal drugs, excess minerals, etc.
2. How do these systems remove the pollutants?
You need to know home water purifiers are not just one big filter. They are made up of a number of filters, each of which has an assigned task. The first filter the water encounters is called a pre-filter and its job is to clean out any large globs like dirt, debris from pipes, etc. that could harm later filters.
The best filter for removing the deadly chemical compounds that are showing up more and more in our water supplies is activated charcoal. So, a filter with activated charcoal will follow next, since there no technology has been found that will do a better job.
In order to remove the remaining pollutants the third step usually will involve either distillation, reverse osmosis, or what is referred to as selective filtration or multi-stage filtration utilizing an ion exchange process.
The distillation process works by heating water until steam forms and that steam is moved to a separate chamber to cool and return to a liquid state. During the process bacteria is killed and inorganic compounds such as lead, potassium, calcium, etc are removed. The process cannot handle organic chemicals very well so distillation must be used together with carbon filtration.
The electricity used in the process of distillation creates a high energy cost and these units are very slow, producing less than four gallons a day of filtered water.
Reverse osmosis units push water against a semi-permeable membrane with very fine pores, the size of water molecules. The process rejects certain contaminants, minerals, and even a large part of the water itself. Most SOCs, such as herbicides and pesticides, are smaller, molecularly, than water and will pass through the membrane and will not be filtered out. That is why these systems must be used in combination with a carbon filter.
Most reverse osmosis systems produce only a gallon or two of filtered water an hour and will waste two or three times that for every gallon produced. They require a storage tank to create any volume of filtered water and, sometimes, a booster pump as well to maintain pressure. Initial costs for the various components and maintenance costs make these units about equal in cost with distillation.
Both distillation and reverse osmosis systems remove all the minerals from the water, including the ones your body needs. When the minerals are removed, the water changes it acidity and will tend to re-balance itself by stealing needed minerals, like calcium, from the body. For this reason, many health experts consider this water unhealthy.
The next system builds on activated charcoal's adsorptive power by mixing it with a resin that has been chemically charged to produce a tremendous filtering material.
This mixture is compressed, or extruded, into a solid block of carbon whose core structure contains small, sub micron pores. As water passes through the carbon block, chemicals, drugs, etc. are physically bonded to the activated carbon. Any cysts such as cryptosporidium and giardia are trapped by the tiny pores, as are any remaining inorganic compounds. Finally, the chemical resin forces the ions of heavy metals, such as lead, to break their bonds with water and the resulting compounds can be trapped by the surface of the filter.
Brackish or salty water cannot be handled by selective filtration systems. However, this would only be an issue with about 5 percent of households in the U.S.
For people without salt water issues, there are big pluses to these systems. They filter water rapidly with little resistance to the water flow, so there is no requirement for storage tanks or booster pumps which means lower initial costs and lower operating costs.
3. Which system will work best for you?
No question about it, if you have a salt water problem, I don't think you can beat a reverse osmosis system. It is what is was designed for years ago, and it does a great job.
Barring a salt water problem, I don't think you can beat selective filtration for the quality of water produced, or for the price. The unit cost is the lowest and they should operate almost maintenance free, only needing a periodic filter change. - 16477
1. What should a good home water purifier do?
It should take polluted water and give you back good, clean, healthy water. A good whole house water purifier will remove over ninety-nine percent of the harmful contaminants from the water. Contaminants like chlorine, the deadly chlorine byproducts (THMs), synthetic organic chemicals (SOCs), herbicides, lead, legal and illegal drugs, excess minerals, etc.
2. How do these systems remove the pollutants?
You need to know home water purifiers are not just one big filter. They are made up of a number of filters, each of which has an assigned task. The first filter the water encounters is called a pre-filter and its job is to clean out any large globs like dirt, debris from pipes, etc. that could harm later filters.
The best filter for removing the deadly chemical compounds that are showing up more and more in our water supplies is activated charcoal. So, a filter with activated charcoal will follow next, since there no technology has been found that will do a better job.
In order to remove the remaining pollutants the third step usually will involve either distillation, reverse osmosis, or what is referred to as selective filtration or multi-stage filtration utilizing an ion exchange process.
The distillation process works by heating water until steam forms and that steam is moved to a separate chamber to cool and return to a liquid state. During the process bacteria is killed and inorganic compounds such as lead, potassium, calcium, etc are removed. The process cannot handle organic chemicals very well so distillation must be used together with carbon filtration.
The electricity used in the process of distillation creates a high energy cost and these units are very slow, producing less than four gallons a day of filtered water.
Reverse osmosis units push water against a semi-permeable membrane with very fine pores, the size of water molecules. The process rejects certain contaminants, minerals, and even a large part of the water itself. Most SOCs, such as herbicides and pesticides, are smaller, molecularly, than water and will pass through the membrane and will not be filtered out. That is why these systems must be used in combination with a carbon filter.
Most reverse osmosis systems produce only a gallon or two of filtered water an hour and will waste two or three times that for every gallon produced. They require a storage tank to create any volume of filtered water and, sometimes, a booster pump as well to maintain pressure. Initial costs for the various components and maintenance costs make these units about equal in cost with distillation.
Both distillation and reverse osmosis systems remove all the minerals from the water, including the ones your body needs. When the minerals are removed, the water changes it acidity and will tend to re-balance itself by stealing needed minerals, like calcium, from the body. For this reason, many health experts consider this water unhealthy.
The next system builds on activated charcoal's adsorptive power by mixing it with a resin that has been chemically charged to produce a tremendous filtering material.
This mixture is compressed, or extruded, into a solid block of carbon whose core structure contains small, sub micron pores. As water passes through the carbon block, chemicals, drugs, etc. are physically bonded to the activated carbon. Any cysts such as cryptosporidium and giardia are trapped by the tiny pores, as are any remaining inorganic compounds. Finally, the chemical resin forces the ions of heavy metals, such as lead, to break their bonds with water and the resulting compounds can be trapped by the surface of the filter.
Brackish or salty water cannot be handled by selective filtration systems. However, this would only be an issue with about 5 percent of households in the U.S.
For people without salt water issues, there are big pluses to these systems. They filter water rapidly with little resistance to the water flow, so there is no requirement for storage tanks or booster pumps which means lower initial costs and lower operating costs.
3. Which system will work best for you?
No question about it, if you have a salt water problem, I don't think you can beat a reverse osmosis system. It is what is was designed for years ago, and it does a great job.
Barring a salt water problem, I don't think you can beat selective filtration for the quality of water produced, or for the price. The unit cost is the lowest and they should operate almost maintenance free, only needing a periodic filter change. - 16477
About the Author:
David Eastham has done extensive research on such topics as reverse osmosis to find the best way to give you good, clean drinking water. Go here for his picks as the best dollar for dollar buys, and the best products overall, in whole house water purfication systems.
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