Thursday, April 13, 2006

Gimme Some Water

Found this old metal frame in the backyard weeds, so I spruced it up with a wire wheel and paint. Now it holds the well pressure tank relocated from the garage.






That made room inside the garage to installed two 20 gallon sediment filters, be sure to seek the largest ports to maintain the best water pressure. I chose to go with two Big Blue sediment filters as the first step. Next to it you see a temporary installation of a Fleck 7000 carbon filter which is likely overkill.

Next will come a Fleck 7000 water softener. We bought our softener and carbon filter here. There was an old Culligan system we gave away that had a leaking bypass valve and they didn't make parts for it any longer.

We had a Sears softener in our prior home that worked just fine, but I wanted a LOT of water pressure. I was keenly aware of flow rates and potential pressure drops. Plus, we had some long pipe runs from the well up to the house. I'd had more experience with copper pipes thanPVCc, so when I piped the lines from the pump through the first sediment filters I had several joint leaks. Grrrrr. After reading about how to gluePVCc, I redid all that and it was perfect. Sadly, I had leaks at the fittings that screwed in now. The problem was I didn't use enough Teflon tape, plus I slathered on the plumber's goop and now everything is jam up.

We kind of installed in phases since I was a little spooked by the initial leaks. After *blush* three plumb jobs all is well. Except ... we had a head scratcher. I couldn't get the softener to regenerate and after a call to The Water Pharmacy, Frank got me straightened out. Appears we had the two heads reversed on the tanks. I thought I installed the softener, but when I opened the tank and peeked it was the carbon filter. That was an easy fix! I bought all the filters and softeners online. I physically picked the Flecks up down around Sarasota at their shop. Hopefully I will get the softener mix-up squared away this weekend.

The cool thing about Flecks is they have 1 1/4 inch valve bodies; so if you are concerned about maintaining your water pressure, these things have some of the least pressure drop you can get at a reasonable price. I'd guess we installed the filters and softener for about $1,500 bucks and estimate we can flow a good solid 13-17 gpm of treated water. The sediment filters are rated at 20 gpm each (times two). The carbon filter is the bottleneck of the system, but now we get 100% carbon filtered water everywhere compared to the 1-3 gpm filters that go under sink. Basically, a whole house filtration and treatment system is Cool Beans. Try pricing a similar system with a major brand installer and it will be 3-5 grand. Fleck and Autotrol make almost all the heads for softeners, they sell them under lots of different names. I do think Culligan makes their own, but their 1 ¼ inch model is $$$$$.

Oh, I left out the bypass valves on both units for two reasons. The valve bodies are smaller and constrictive hence I feared flow and pressure drop and they tend to leak over time. I guess it's a trade-off. I don't mind whipping up a pipe bypass if a meteor strikes and smashes one of the systems to bits. I'm much faster and pretty leak free aPVCvc now. Can't wait till I try my hand under the house and screw up a bunch of PEX tubing.

Status = still on Honeydo list


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