Ensuring the quality of your home’s water is essential for the health and well-being of your family. Installing a whole-house water filtration system can provide comprehensive protection, delivering cleaner water to every tap in your home. This not only safeguards your drinking water but also ensures that the water you use for bathing and cooking is free of contaminants. By understanding the benefits and options available, you can make an informed decision to enhance your home’s water quality.
Why Add a Whole-Home Water Filtration System?
Even after treatment, municipal water can still contain contaminants such as lead, pesticides, and residual chemicals. Additionally, treatment processes often involve adding chemicals like chlorine, which can impact both your family’s health and the water’s taste and smell. For homeowners with private wells, filtration is equally essential. Well water may contain contaminants like sediment, bacteria, or high mineral levels, as well as pollutants from nearby agricultural or industrial activity. Installing a whole-home water filtration system ensures clean, safe water throughout your home, whether you rely on a municipal supply or a private well.
Mechanical Filtration
Most whole-home water filters use some form of mechanical filtration and even multiple layers. Mechanical filtration involves removing suspended particles by passing water through a mesh filter or cartridge.
The effectiveness of mechanical filtration depends on the filter’s pore size, which determines the size of particles it can capture. For example, a filter with a larger pore size might trap only visible debris like sediment or rust. In contrast, a finer filter can remove microscopic contaminants such as silt and even some bacteria.
Many systems combine different layers of mechanical filtration, starting with coarse filters to catch larger particles and progressing to finer ones for smaller impurities. Prefilters trap the largest particles. They’re, sometimes, called sediment filters and are most necessary for homes with wells, which are more prone to having large dirt particles in their water supply.
However, prefilters are usually also incorporated into water filtration systems for homes that use municipal water. This is because they extend the lifetime of the more expensive filters deeper in the system. By removing larger debris and sediment, prefilters help prevent clogging and wear on finer filters, ensuring that the overall filtration system functions more efficiently and lasts longer.
When choosing a whole-home system, ensure that it incorporates a prefilter to keep maintenance costs down and finer filters to capture smaller contaminants. Also, keep in mind that, while mechanical filtration is excellent for removing physical impurities, it often works best when paired with other filtration methods, such as activated carbon or UV systems, to address chemical and biological contaminants.
Absorptive Filtration
Mechanical filters alone are unable to trap gases and chemical molecules because their pore sizes are too large. To address this, many whole-home water filtration systems include absorptive filter media, such as activated carbon.
Activated carbon, also known as activated charcoal, is a highly porous form of carbon that can effectively absorb gases like volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as well as chemicals such as chlorine and chloramine. VOCs are a group of carbon-based chemicals often found in water and can include substances like benzene, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene. They can be harmful to your health and contribute to poor water quality.
Due to its large surface area, activated carbon can undergo numerous filtration cycles before needing replacement. Once it traps harmful contaminants, they are neutralized and rendered harmless, providing a safer, cleaner water supply for your home.
Activated carbon comes in two primary forms: granular carbon and carbon block. Granular carbon consists of loose, small particles, allowing water to flow through the filter quickly. While it provides effective filtration, its larger spaces between the particles can allow some contaminants to pass through. On the other hand, carbon blocks are compacted into solid form, which provides a denser surface area for filtration. This structure allows carbon block filters to capture more contaminants than granular carbon, especially when it comes to chemicals like chlorine and chloramine. When shopping for a water treatment system, focus on ones that combine granular and carbon block filters because they balance filtration performance with flow rate.
UV Light
To eliminate over 99% of pathogens in your water, consider a whole-house water filtration system that includes ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI). The UVGI process uses a UV lamp emitting ultraviolet (UV) light, effectively neutralizing harmful microorganisms like bacteria, viruses, and protozoa.
Unlike chemical disinfectants, UV light doesn’t introduce any substances into your water, so it doesn’t alter the taste, smell, or appearance. It’s a chemical-free, environmentally friendly way to ensure that your water is free from harmful pathogens without the need for chlorine or other chemicals.
UV light is highly effective at targeting a broad range of pathogens, including bacteria like E. coli, viruses like hepatitis, and protozoa like Giardia. However, it’s important to note that UV light does not remove chemical contaminants, sediment, or heavy metals. Therefore, it’s often combined with other mechanical and absorptive filtration methods to provide comprehensive water treatment.
One of the advantages of UV light is its speed. The process requires only seconds to deactivate harmful microorganisms. This makes it a very efficient option for households that need to disinfect large amounts of water quickly, like if you have a well.
When purchasing a system for your home, keep in mind that, for the most effective results, the water must be clear before it enters the UV chamber. Particles or sediment in the water can block UV light from fully reaching pathogens, reducing the system’s effectiveness. Quality whole-house systems with UV lights incorporate prefilters to ensure the water is clear before UV exposure, optimizing performance and ensuring safe, pathogen-free water throughout your home.
Water Softening
Water softeners address hard water caused by minerals like calcium and magnesium. These minerals can make it more difficult for soaps to lather, lead to scale buildup in your plumbing, and potentially reduce the lifespan of appliances. Some water filtration systems can also soften your water, or you can install one separately to improve your water quality.
The most common type of water softener is a salt-based system. These systems use a process called ion exchange, where calcium and magnesium ions in the water are exchanged for sodium ions. As hard water passes through a resin tank, the resin beads absorb calcium and magnesium, and sodium ions are released into the water in their place.
However, not everyone wants a salt-based system. For those seeking an alternative, non-salt water softeners are available. These systems use various technologies, such as reverse osmosis or template-assisted crystallization (TAC), to reduce scale buildup without adding sodium to the water. Non-salt systems are often preferred by homeowners who need to avoid increased sodium intake or those with moderately hard water.
Contact Your Local Experts
At Beltway Air Conditioning, Heating & Plumbing, we have served the residents of Hanover, MD and the surrounding areas for years. We are expert plumbers who can help you choose the best water treatment system for your home. Additionally, we install, repair, and maintain heating and cooling systems. Contact us today to schedule an appointment with one of our experienced team members.
