Drinking clean and filtered water is everyone’s priority, but no one wants to invest in expensive water filtration systems. People want to ensure they really need a water filtration system before investing in it. This guide covers the need for water filters and the type of filters suitable for your home.
How Do I Know That I Need a Water Filter?
There are various reasons that one should be concerned about water quality. Bad water quality can greatly affect human health and also damage home appliances. Sometimes inferior quality water can be detected through the visible signs, but sometimes you need to perform certain water quality tests to check your water for contamination. Even if your water seems clean, it may have various contaminants. You can opt for the following simple techniques to ensure that you need a water filter.
Talk to the Neighbors and Previous Owners
If you buy a new house near a well or a newly purchased home with a well water supply, you should talk about water quality with your neighbors and previous owner. First, ask your previous homeowner about the water quality, pressure, and maintenance. Also, ask for the latest well water test.
Although wells located in close proximity vary in terms of depth, pressure, and contamination, it’s worth finding out if your neighbors experience any common issues with their water supplies. Eventually, you will also get a better idea about the local water supply.
Analyze Your Local Environment
You need to check the weather patterns of your local environment. If your area had a flood, your well might need restorative treatment to remove its microorganisms and contaminations.
In addition, you should also check the well depth and its location. Shallow wells are more prone to water contamination. Besides this, if you see orange scum on the water surface, it indicates that iron is present in excessive amounts.
You also need to look closely if you find large-scale industries near your vicinity; your well water must be contaminated with industrial effluences.
You should test your well water in all the cases as mentioned above for your surety.
Test Your Well Water
There are two easy ways of testing well water. First is to take your water sample to a certified water testing lab and get your water quality results within a week. You can opt for another method if you don’t want to spend money on expensive water testing through labs. Water testing kits are affordable and the easiest to test your home well water.
These kits are available online at reasonable prices. You can use a water testing kit to check your water’s quality. Take a water sample into a container and dip a test strip into the sample, not more than 10 seconds. Take out the strip and compare the sample with the reference chart. You will get the results about the presence of specific water contaminants.
Choose Water Filters According to the Need
Carbon Well Water Filter
After testing your well water, if you find that the water contains higher amounts of volatile-containing compounds (VOCs) like benzene, chloroform, or trihalomethanes, then a carbon filter will be suitable to get contamination-free water. Carbon filters are used to decrease the amount of dissolved organic contaminants. These contaminants are responsible for bad taste and smell.
Carbon filters use large carbon blocks of finely ground and tightly packed carbon. These blocks capture the contaminants on their surface when water passes through them. Besides unwanted contaminants, these blocks can also remove the residues of disinfectant chlorine and other chemicals you deliberately added to the water.
Sediment Well Water Filter
Sediment water is often cloudy and off-color. You need sediment filters to remove these particles or sediments from your well water. These filters are the first element of a water filtration system. Moreover, these filters better work combined with other filters as they remove larger particles before the detailed filtration from the subsequent filter. Sediment filters use reusable and replaceable screens that capture all the dirt and debris.
If you notice that sediments in your water have increased, you should install sediment filters to eliminate them from your water.
Well Water Filters for Bacteria and Viruses
If your well water test indicates that your water has some harmful microorganisms like bacteria and viruses, then you might need some water filters specifically associated with their removal. You can also disinfect your water by introducing disinfectant chlorine in the water. For water-borne pathogens, using chlorine and other disinfectant chemicals is one of the effective ways to kill harmful pathogens.
Apart from using chlorine, you can also use UV water purifiers. These purifiers disturb the genetic makeup of microorganisms and purify water for safe consumption.
Well Water Softener
Well water, also known as groundwater, is harder than surface water. As the well water flows deep under the soils and rocks, it has higher concentrations of hard water minerals and metals. After testing, if your well water is declared hard, you need a filtration system to remove its hardness. Using a water softener filtration system is your option. These softeners are installed at the point of entry of water in the house or at the main supply.
Water softeners remove calcium and magnesium salts and exchange them with the sodium ion. These filters are also called ion exchangers due to their ion exchange capacity. Water softeners improve water quality and reduce the hard water impact on appliances and plumbing pipes.
Whole House Water Filter or Under Sink Water Filter
Before opting for either a whole house water filter or an under-sink water filter, you should perform a water quality test. As per your water test report, if your water quality is fine and free of any significant contaminants, you can avoid installing a whole house water filtration system. Instead, you can opt for a point-specific filter for your drinking and cooking.
Under sink water filters are best to get pure water for your kitchen supply. You can install an under-sink kitchen filter on the kitchen water supply. Similarly, some other filters are also available that are installed on a specific water outlet if you don’t want to install a whole house water filtration system.
If your water test shows a bad water quality with significant contaminants, you should install a whole house water filtration system. It supplies pure water to the entire house and in every water outlet, including the kitchen and bathrooms.
Final Thoughts
Well water is often contaminated with higher concentrations of minerals, metals, agricultural runoffs, industrial effluences, and specific pathogens. To get purified and filtered water for your home, you must install a suitable water filtration system according to your water quality test results.
Leave a Reply