How To Make Your Own Whole House Water Filter

Written past: Cistron Fitzgerald // Last Updated: Mar xiv, 2022

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Is it possible for you to make your own DIY whole firm h2o filter in order to save coin, and if so how? Likewise, are there whatever drawbacks to this? What are the things that you accept to consider? Where practice you even first?

Nosotros are going to answer these and many more questions in the following commodity. Ready to take on your adjacent DIY project? Permit'south go!

Contents

Why build your ain home water filtration organisation in the kickoff place?
How to brand your own DIY whole firm water filter
- Having your water tested
- What you lot will need
- Organisation components
- The Setup

Why Build Your Own Home Water Filtration System in the Beginning Place?

Pros

Most importantly, yous will relieve quite a lot of money when you do everything yourself. Whole house h2o filters are not exactly inexpensive.
Yous volition become a h2o expert along the way and know your system by heart which makes installation, filter replacements and troubleshooting so much easier.
You are free to choose whatever components you desire. If you prefer catalytic over activated carbon, groovy. If you don't consider a post-filter to be necessary, non a problem!
All that'southward needed autonomously from the filters are common plumbing supplies that y'all can become at your local hardware store at a low toll. You might even be able to use some of the old materials that are currently gathering dust in your garage.
Yous can make modifications after if you like.

Cons

You cannot be 100 percent certain about the filtration effectiveness of your system without having the filtered water tested by a certified lab which is costly.
It requires time.

A Word of Caution:

Many of the DIY h2o treatment methods that y'all can read near online might exist suited for emergency situations where make clean water is inaccessible. Even so, they don't provide a good for you drinking water solution in the long run for ii reasons:

They are impractical and don't evangelize a sufficient amount of water for whole firm use – think drinking, cooking, showering, laundry.
They miss many of the potentially harmful contaminants that might exist lurking in your h2o.

Lesser line: NSF-certified filters are still the best way to ensure that the h2o in your dwelling house is clean and rubber.

How to Make Your Ain DIY Whole House Water Filter

It'south time for you to acquire how you lot tin can build your own whole house water filtration system. First, nosotros volition become into the benefits of having your water tested before nosotros fifty-fifty start thinking about what your perfect organization could expect like. Then you get a listing of tools and other components that are required. And finally, you will learn how to set everything up step by step.

Having Your Water Tested

It's simple: You cannot know what filtration requirements you lot have without knowing the status of your h2o. This is why it's always a skillful idea to take your water professionally tested.

Water Testing Report

It too makes a departure if you are on well or city water. Most urban center waters, for case, contain either backlog chlorine or chloramine used for disinfection. Well water on the other manus might comprise large amounts of sediment, iron, manganese and hardness minerals.

Bottom line: If you want to make sure that you lot become the cleanest and safest water possible, conduct the testing first so that you know what you are dealing with. Then y'all tin can cull filtration components appropriately.

What You Will Demand

It goes without proverb that y'all have to take some very basic plumbing skills for this to work. Or at to the lowest degree you should be somewhat handy with tools – everything else yous can acquire by doing.

Oh, and a little bit of patience wouldn't injure either…

Other than that, here is a list of tools and accessories that you lot will demand:

Tools & Accessories

Drill
Drill bits
2x adjustable wrench
Pipe cutter or hacksaw
Bucket
Teflon tape
Screwdriver
Solder supplies (optional)
Mounting brackets (not always)
Tubing
Shut-off valves
Bypass valves (optional)
Force per unit area gauges (optional)
Different kinds of connectors, e.g. push fittings, elbows, tees, …

plumbing wrenches

Organisation Components

The basic thought is to take multiple separate whole house filters and connect them in series. Thereby you lot tin can choose betwixt housings that can accommodate 10″ or 20″ cartridges that are either two.five″ or 4.5″ (large blueish) in diameter.

These are industry standard sizes meaning that almost every company on the market place has cartridges made that fit these housings. In other words, they are interchangeable. This has 2 benefits:

You can choose from an infinite pick of filters specialized in nitrate reduction, arsenic reduction, lead reduction – whatever you require.
Yous can make huge savings as many no-name products are much more affordable than what you lot accept to pay for a cartridge of the same quality sold by ane of the pop brands.

Thus you want to stay away from proprietary filters and housings. They won't fit annihilation else so that the manufacturer can accuse a lot more for them.

By the way, the larger the filter size, the greater the maximum menstruation rate. two.five″ x 10″ might provide 5 gallons of filtered h2o per minute which is usually not sufficient for whole house use.

With 2.five″ ten 20″ you can about double that flow rate. eight-10 gpm should exist enough for larger homes with 2-3 bathrooms. If you lot desire to go even bigger than that, opt for 4.5″ ten xx (10)".

A bigger filter also has the reward that it requires less frequent replacements.

Whatever filter(s) you go for, it's always all-time if they were tested and certified confronting NSF Standards (42 and/or 53) which guarantees filtration effectiveness.

Step-Downwardly Sediment + Carbon Filtration

Filter Chain Example

Footstep-down filtration is for applications with multiple (sediment) water problems. For instance:

You can employ three-stages of filtration starting with a 20-micron sediment pre-filter, followed by 5-micron and lastly a 1-micron filter phase.

The pre-filter will trap larger particles to protect all subsequent filter stages from bottleneck prematurely. If you are on a well supply, you might accept to starting time with a 50-micron pre-filter to remove sand, dirt and rust before everything else.

FYI:

1 micron is a thousandth of a millimeter. As you probably have already guessed, a filter rated at one micron can likewise capture particles down to a size of ane micron, such as bacteria. Thus a smaller micron rating indicates a more thorough filtration.

The dilemma: The smaller the micron rating, the lower the water flow rate. Now keep in mind that a whole house filter has to provide plenty h2o for your entire home. Therefore, sufficient h2o flow is mandatory unless y'all don't mind a drop in pressure level when using multiple h2o outlets at the same fourth dimension. What's more, each boosted filter will contribute to the flow/force per unit area subtract.

You tin can likewise mix in one or ii activated carbon filter stages for improved water sense of taste & scent (and prophylactic) – in fact that'due south what we recommend. You have the choice betwixt granular carbon and a carbon block filter. Both are great at removing chemicals like chlorine and its byproducts. They also help with other natural and synthetic compounds – think pesticides, heavy metals such equally pb, chromium, arsenic, nitrates and so on.

If your city supply uses chloramine instead of chlorine for h2o disinfection, regular activated carbon won't suffice. A much longer contact fourth dimension would be required to accomplish noteworthy results, which is problematic for whole house applications. That's where catalytic carbon comes into play. We similar to telephone call it carbon on steroids. It can effectively eliminate chloramine and chloramine by-products and just like regular carbon besides reduces THMs and VOCs.

Do you receive water from a individual well? So you might require a specialized iron/manganese filter or a softener to tackle water hardness. In some cases, well water is also polluted with chemicals and microorganisms from agricultural runoff. Unfortunately, nosotros tin can't give you more advice than that without knowing your water situation.

Bypass + Shut-Off Valves (Optional)

A shut-off valve before and after the filter setup let for easier cartridge replacements. And whenever yous take to service your system you lot can simply open the bypass then that your family unit yet has access to h2o in the unabridged house.

Force per unit area Gauges (Optional)

Pressure gauges permit y'all to measure force per unit area before and after your filter concatenation. If yous detect a meaning driblet it'due south time to supplant i or more of the filter cartridges.

Bleed Connection for Backwashing (Optional)

Especially if you are on a individual well, a sediment pre-filter has to do a lot of initial work to remove the larger contaminants from your water. As a result, it will clog upwardly quickly and require more frequent replacements.

This is not only inconvenient, you lot will also have to keep a stock of replacements cartridges or social club new ones on a regular basis, both at additional cost.

And so consider calculation a bleed line connection to your sediment filter(southward) for backwashing. This way, any trapped sediment that accumulates over time will be discharged out of the filter torso. However, this does not work with all types of sediment filters, such as solid propylene cake filters. Pleated ones on the other hand are fine.

Using an automatic timer-based valve that opens for a minute or and so each day even allows for self-cleaning. All that is left for you lot to do is cheque the batteries every once in a while – it doesn't get whatever more convenient!

The Setup

The setup itself is pretty straightforward. Because we've already covered how to install a whole house water filter here, we won't get into slap-up particular about it at present. Just a couple of hints:

Make sure that yous comply with local plumbing codes.
Avert outside installation if possible.
Choose a location that's easily accessible and close to where the chief water line enters your dwelling house and then that yous have filtered water at every outlet. If you want unfiltered water outside, split off those lines before the filtration chain.
Go upstream of your h2o heater.
Showtime by shutting off the main water supply to forbid major leaks. Yous also want to bleed all remaining h2o by opening nearby faucets and other fixtures.
The installation itself will require a lot of dry fitting. Button fittings are great if you don't like to solder.
Apply plumber'due south tape on all threaded ends for proper sealing.
Be careful not to over tighten any plastic fittings to prevent cracks.
Grease O-rings and brand certain that they sit tight.
When washed, check for leaks. Then flush the entire system for several minutes to remove whatever installation debris. Dissimilar filtering media too require priming. Follow manufacturer instructions here.

On superlative of that, you lot can find many helpful installation videos on YouTube:

If you have whatever questions almost how to brand your own whole house water filter, please don't hesitate to get out a comment below!

Nearly the Author Gene Fitzgerald

Gene Fitzgerald has been with BOS since the very start. She is head of content cosmos and has fully immersed herself into the home h2o treatment manufacture just to become an expert herself. Outside of BOS, Factor loves reading books on philosophy & social problems, making music, and hiking.
Learn more than well-nigh .

Gene