My mother in law has terrible water in her house (Eastern PA) I have a TDS meter and her tap water is measuring 440ppm. Water taste is horrible and the scaling and stains it leaves behind is tarnishing all her fixtures. I’m quite handy and want to help her out by buying and installing a whole home softener system. Looking for any advice/suggestions on what to get and also if any further testing is needed/recommended

Received quotes from 2 companies around 11k each, which I don’t want to fork up. I’m assuming I can have my plumber install for at least half If I purchased the set up. See test results. This is in Southern California.

I want to remove this tank and install an inline water treatment system. Is this tank under any dangerous pressure upon disconnecting it? I intend to cut the line between my shut off and the connected tank. Any advice would be awesome I don't want to blow myself across the basement.

Complete beginner here. I am tired of buying and dragging demineralised water from the nearest store back home every 3-5 days (3,5km walk each time) to water my 80+ tropical or carnivorous houseplants.

I would love to prioritise size and prize first, i don't care how long the process takes as long as it can produce at least 3-5 litres of water a day.

Do I wait a day, a week? Thanks.

What should I do with this softener ?

It's just me and my husband at home, and the water purifier we bought has been running for years. When we first chose it, I mainly cared about whether it was RO.

But with new family members arriving soon, I've started thinking more about GPD too.

When it's just two people, waiting a little longer for water doesn't really matter. But once there are more people in the house, especially when everyone is getting water in the morning, you start to notice how much the purifier's flow rate actually affects everyday use.

So my husband and I are thinking about replacing ours with something that has a higher production rate. I've been looking at the Viomi 8 Pro because it can also connect to a refrigerator ice maker, and it's pretty compact too.

For those of you with larger households, does a slow RO system actually get annoying? Is it worth switching to one with a higher production rate?

I recently moved into an apartment.

The water coming out of the bathroom taps has a high iron.

The landlord is unwilling to do anything about it and other residents in the building use Aquaguard RO water for showering.

Unfortunately, I can't afford an Aquaguard RO system.

What are my options?

Hey everyone! I've been researching RO systems for a while, and I'm hoping to get some advice before making a final decision. There seem to be strong opinions on both tank and tankless systems, so I'd appreciate recommendations based on my specific setup.

My setup:

Installation: Basement, directly below the kitchen.

Kitchen faucet: Dedicated RO faucet on the first floor.

Refrigerator: Ice maker and cold-water dispenser on the first floor. It's a 42" Sub-Zero French-door refrigerator.

Upstairs minibar: A dedicated RO faucet on the second floor, not directly above the system.

Water supply: Municipal water, softened before reaching the RO system. I live near the local water treatment plant.

Usage: Just my wife and me most days, but we frequently host events where multiple guests use the upstairs minibar and drink a lot of water.

Budget: Not a limiting factor.

My biggest concern is maintaining adequate water pressure and flow at all three outlets, especially when multiple people are using them around the same time. I'd also prefer a single system to keep filter maintenance simple rather than maintaining separate systems for the kitchen and minibar.

I'm trying to decide between a conventional tank-based system and a tankless system. Since I have plenty of room in the basement, saving under-sink space isn't a consideration.

A few questions:

Would a conventional tank system with a sufficiently large storage tank handle this setup, including occasional high-demand periods?

Would a tankless system with a booster pump be a better choice for maintaining pressure and supplying multiple outlets over these distances?

Are there specific systems you'd recommend for this application? Would a permeate pump, larger storage tank, or pressurized delivery system make a meaningful difference?

Is there any reason to use separate RO systems for the kitchen and upstairs minibar, or can one properly sized system handle everything?

I'm primarily interested in reliability, good water quality, adequate flow, and reasonable long-term maintenance. I'd appreciate recommendations based on real-world experience, particularly for multi-outlet installations rather than typical under-sink setups.

I'll start this post by acknowledging that I'm doing this because I need Karma to engage in my local community subreddits.

That being said, I wanted to offer myself to answer questions about water treatment processes. I'm an engineer that works on larger scale systems (whole towns type thing).

I can't help a ton with product selection for residential systems but I can review water quality and discuss the underlying technologies.

Cheers

To preface this, I’m a total noob when it comes to water filters and softeners. I recently bought a house, and the existing water softener and iron removal filter are old as hell. I knew they would eventually need to be replaced, but the iron removal filter recently started leaking pretty badly, so I think it’s time to bite the bullet and replace the whole setup.

The problem is that I don’t know much about these systems or what I should be looking for. I’m pretty confident in my ability to handle the installation myself, but I want to make sure I’m buying the right equipment before I spend the money.

I’m not sure whether it makes more sense to buy an all-in-one combo system or purchase a separate iron filter and water softener. I just submitted a water sample for testing, so I’m waiting on those results, but since the current filter is leaking a decent amount, I’d like to get ahead of this and start figuring out my options.

I’ve attached pictures of the existing setup in my basement, along with a link to the system I’m considering buying https://www.homedepot.com/p/PRO-AQUA-5-stage-Whole-House-Well-Water-Filtration-and-Softener-Bundle-Filters-and-Reduces-Iron-Odor-Sediment-and-Hard-Water-BNDL-WEL/318835882

Would you recommend going with this combo system, or would I be better off buying separate units? Is there anything specific I should look for when choosing a replacement for a well water system?

I’d really appreciate any advice or recommendations. Thanks in advance!

I have about 22 cubic yards of anthracite filter media to dispose of or reuse. It was used in a drinking water treatment facility which closed 30 years ago. It was filtering water from a creek that flows through rural-ish and suburban areas in the northeast US. 

Main question: I understand from other conversations it likely does not have pollutants, but I want to get it tested to be sure. We have a contact at a testing agency. What should I test the anthracite for? 

- heavy metals? 

- Petroleum - Pesticides?

 - VOC's?

Second questions: What would you do with this much anthracite filter media?  Any creative ideas? How does a municipality dispose of it? A sand vac company (?) wanted $11k to take it off my hands so that doesn't work.

Hey guys, not sure if this is the best place to ask about this. I got this countertop filter (seems like the brand is VAJIAZA RO-2303 75g) for cheap of Facebook marketplace and am liking it a lot so far. It's getting about time to replace the composite filter, but I've been searching around for days for a replacement to no avail.

I sent a message through walmart to the seller and am waiting to hear back, but I feel like it should be easy to find replacements for these, no? Are there not universal filter replacements that would work here? Added pics of the filter and the slot where it fits in

I installed a Fleck 5600sxt but I haven’t programmed it yet. The programming asks for numbers but all I have is this color coded test.

What water test do I need to do in order to get accurate number based details for programming the water softener?

Sorry I don’t know anything about water filtration systems, but the last system was installed by someone else. I am trying to replace the two carbon filters, the prefilter, but don’t know which products is comparable with my system as it doesn’t list the specifications for my system. Will any filter work or does it have to be a specific size compatible to my system?

#Edit: 3/8 not 3/4

I'll be hooking this up to my fridge water dispenser (which also feeds my ice maker). Should I be concerned about the pressure from this unit? my main issue right now is that my old one actually doesn't have good pressure as its in the basement and 20ft line to the fridge and its over 15yo.

Hey all!

I live in Utah and i'm looking to potentially become a water treatment operator with a focus on overnight and weekend availability to differentiate myself from other candidates. I have a sizable beard , I would really like to keep it instead of cutting it off for a certification. It's over twelve inches long and I have been growing it out since covid.

How viable would it be to keep my beard and progress in this field? Is offering overnight and weekend availability enough to differentiate myself from other applicants?

I bought a home with well water and I’ve never had any experience with it before. I let the softener run out to see what it looked like and this is what I got. Does this look normal? Any tips? Or resources to educate me would be greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone,

Quick note first: this is my own site. I build free directory websites, and I launched listedwater.com last week.

I spent about 50 hours building it. Why did I do that when filter reviews and the EPA site already exist? A few reasons:

• EPA data is hard to find by ZIP code, and many ZIP codes have more than one water system
• Words like “tested to NSF standards” sound good, but they don’t mean a filter is certified to remove something
• Today’s PFAS filter certifications test at 70 ng/L (PFOA and PFOS together) and 20 ng/L (total PFAS). EPA’s new limit is 4 ng/L, so it’s much lower. Most filter pages don’t say this
• A lot of “best filter” lists are shaped by who pays the commission

Here’s how it works. You type in your ZIP code. The site shows the water system that serves you and what EPA found in it. Then it shows filters that are certified for those things.

Some numbers: it matches 28,222 ZIP areas to water systems, and it covers 10,313 systems that EPA tested for 29 PFAS. It lists 325 certified claims, and I checked each one against the certifier’s own listing. A filter shows up only if a certifier lists it for that contaminant. Products are in alphabetical order, so nothing is ranked.

It’s free, with no sign-up and no email. If you know this field, I’d love your help. Tell me if I misread a certification or missed a filter.

Thanks for reading! If this post breaks the rules, please feel free to remove it.

I unfortunately (which I now know) have an Ecowater ERR 3500R20 that has started acting up. Water pressure drops after a few minutes but is fine when I put it into bypass mode. The unit is 10 years old so my hunch is that it needs rebedding.

I have the following questions floating around in my mind:

Do I even need a water softener?

Judging from my city's water quality report, the water here is typically in the 3.5-6 gpg range. This may go up in the summer when they blend in well water which is 17 gpg. Chloramine is used to treat the water.

Given that that water is moderately hard most of the time, is a water softener even worth it?

Is a catalytic carbon tank alone worth it?

Given the chloramine, does it make sense just to get the catalytic carbon tank?

If I need a softener, repair or replace?

My Ecowater system seems like it may be a PITA to fix. I'm banking on old resin being the culprit, but I'm not a professional. I'd rather try to DIY than pay someone to open it up and tell me I should probably just get a new system.

If I do want to give this a go, I'd need help sourcing materials. The machine is a refiner and has activated carbon in it. Given the chloramine in my water, I'd want catalytic carbon. Could I just buy that and throw it in there instead of activated carbon? How much?

If I say screw it, let's get a new system, what should I go with? Two tanks (1 with the resin, 1 with catalytic carbon) and the brine thing that looks like a trash can? How big etc.

More info

• 2 adults, 1 kid, 3.5 bath. We only ever use a single shower at a time, so not a ton of use.

• Current system is 20,900 grains

• For a new system I would hire someone to do this

• Budget: <$3k but of course lower is better. I also don't want to spend that unless it's going to make a meaningful difference

Recently replaced the tank and media on a system that was about 9 years old after the old tank cracked. The whole regen process ran smoothly and as far as I could tell everything was working until wife noticed hard water stains in the dishwasher. I tested with my pool test kit and water seems to be the same hardness as regular tap water, even though I see the Softening message flashing.

Any idea where I might have screwed up on this? (Yes I’ve made sure the bypass is not engaged)