Water filters

[CityGirlintheCountry]

After numerous kidney stones and cats with UTIs, I have decided to get a water filter.

I'm thinking about one of those that attaches to the sink faucet. Does anyone have any experience with these? Can you recommend one? Pros? Cons?

 

[debilorrah]

Pur. Don't go cheap, because it never fails, they break and get clogged. Do you have ice and water in your fridge door?

 

[twentynine]

Exactly why do you think filtering your water will help with kidney stones or UTIs in cats?

Any dissolved impurity that is in solution will pass right through a filter, the filter will only remove impurities that are suspended.

Well let me correct and explain-- reverse osmosis filters will remove dissolved solids, but a normal (X value) micron filter will not.

 

[CityGirlintheCountry]

This area has high lime and calcium content in the water. When I use a glass of water in the incubator it is crusted over after the water evaporates. My understanding is that the lime and calcium are what encourage both kidney stones and UTIs in cats. At least, the vet told me to start using bottled water with the cats.

Is there a filter that filters out lime and whatnot? That is what I need. A whole house filter would do that but I can't afford the $5000 price tag. I was hoping a sink filter would do the job.

Debi- I have an ice maker in the fridge, but not a door thingie. I'm old school.

 

[debilorrah]

Quote:
We had a filter when we lived in a high calcium area and it helped a TON!!!! I could never get my dishes clean before the filter. I actually had to use CLR to wash glasses! Not after getting the filter.

 

[twentynine]

Quote:
Okay I treat water for a living.

Lime-- found usually as calcium or an elemental combination of calcium hydroxides/chlorides or carbonates. It is dissolved, in solution, a filter will not remove. Manganese and iron are also very common.

Picture, sugar dissolved in water, pass that sugar water through a filter, and on the output side of the filter you still have sugar water. On the other hand--- Picture a teaspoon of sand stirred up in a glass of water, pass the sand/water through a filter and on the output side of the filter NO SAND, larger than the nominal micron rating of the filter.

Now all kinds of qualifications here----

Reverse osmosis filter-- will actually produce pure water (demineralized), most common application of this process is desalanazation (spl remove salt).
Calcium and lime will precipitate (make a ring in the bowl) when exposed to heat or air, as your water passes through your pipes it gets warmer, and a slight amount of calcium will precipitate when transiting the filter.

$5000 price tag?

What I have on my whole house system is a water softener with a prefilter (to remove suspended solids that could foul the softener resin). Cost me about $500 and I installed myself, so total cost about $650. Yes! I do have to add salt sodium chloride or potassium chloride. This removes all elemental impurities. But this is not a filter it is actually an ion exchange system, ----- a deionizer

Sears, Home Depot, Lowes, Do-it Center hardwares, and the good old Culligan Man sells them.

By the way have you actually had your water tested? Lots of stuff will produce crust when water evaporates.

 

[bakerjw]

I personally don't like water softeners. Luckily we don't have hard water in fact it is quite soft. For drinking I put in a small reverse osmosis system and use that for the refrigerator as well as an extra faucet on the sink. It is about as pure as you can get and the price of $150.00 from Lowes isn't that bad.

If I had to do a whole house I'd certainly be looking at Easywater over a traditional softener.

 

[KenK]

We have a whole house "iron" filter. It seems to me that it cost about $2,000. The water now tastes good and we aren't ruining our clothes in the washing machine. Don't know if it takes out any other stuff.

 

[twentynine]

Okay!

Iron filter.

An iron filter is not a filter in the true sense of the word. An iron filter uses a sepcially charged media to attrack and bind the iron molecules together. This media has to be backwashed and a chemical agent is used to make the "filter media" release the iron molecules. The below is copied and pasted from a sales website.

The iron-laden water enters the top of the unit and flows through the media. The media attracts and binds to the iron. Only clean, clear water is passed from the filter to your home.

About every 4 days, the filter removes the accumulated iron that has been trapped inside. This is done by an automatic self-cleaning cycle called backwashing. The backwash cycle draws a cleaning agent into the filter. The cleaning agent causes the media to release the iron which is then flushed out of the filter. The filter then thoroughly rinses the media bed, removing any remaining iron, sediment and the cleaning agent. Once the backwash cycle has ended, the filter returns itself to normal operation.

The cleaning agent must be checked and replenished periodically (typically every 3-6 months) to maintain proper and efficient operation.

One of the cons of installing a salt recharged water softener is it will add sodium to the water. How ever it can be regenerated with potassium chloride, but it takes a larger proportion of potassium chloride to do the same work that sodium chloride does.

As I stated earlier, reverse osmosis maybe the way to go. But prior to spending any money, I would take a sample of my water to have it tested. Pool stores sometimes will do it for you, Culligan will do it, or look in the Yellow pages.

I have/had problems with kidney stones, both before and after installing a water softener. Because of the extended hours I work, I drink very little of the "tap water" from my home. At work we have a bottled water service that peddles deionized/purified water. In my case I don't think it has made one iota of difference.