house water treatment systems

[Mark Modrall]

Hi...

Our house has a well with fairly hard water. When we moved in, the arsenic concentration was just below the epa max, but the limit has since been lowered. We put in a reverse osmosis system for drinking water 6 years ago, but now we're looking at a whole house system. My wife's had a couple of guys come out and make their pitches. Everybody says their system is patented and the other guy's is outdated technology.

So anyone have any recommendations on good systems for removing arsenic?

They also recommend a water softener, which makes some sense given the hardness of the water.

I've been concerned about how all of these new stages will affect water pressure. We have a particulate filter on the whole house and generally the water pressure is underwhelming. A couple of faucets with good aerators seem okay. The guys pitching systems so far say that it's calcification on the water heater that's causing the pressure drop - except that we just have a hot water holding tank and the water is heated by the furnace.

How would we put some of these systems in without dampening the water pressure even further?

Thanks mark

[Joe]

My first stop would be to find a competent well drilling/servicing contractor and upgrade the pump, well or whatever is most likely to yield more volume as well as pressure. Well systems seem to degrade slowly, even the bestter ones. Yours may just be wearing out. HTH

Joe

[Paul Franklin]

I second that recommendation. Increasing pressure could be a simple as adjusting the pressure switch and recharging the pressure tank accordingly.

You will lose 5-15 psi across the softener and every filter or treatment device will have some additional pressure drop, so you are wise to consider this if your pressure is only adequate now. The drop gets worse with increased flow rate (like two showers going).

A nice solution (but pricey) is one of the variable speed pumps with controller. Assuming your well has enough flow capacity, they will maintain your pressure at almost any desired value, regardless of filter drops and the number of fixtures you have open. (There are some things, like undersized piping or severely restricted piping that they can't compensate for, but in most cases they work very nicely.)

HTH,

Paul F.

[Gary Slusser]

Since you have a domestic coil in a boiler to heat your water, the coil is scaled up from hard water scale. A softener will prevent more scale and dissolve the scale that's in the coil.

You do not want a POE (whole house) RO. They are very pricey to buy, operate and maintain. You would need the RO and then a storage tank, pump, pressure tank and not run RO water through metal plumbing/pipe.

There are up to 4 types of arsenic, and the best choice for treatment is a 'filter'. Search for arsenic + treatment or filter and see what you can find.

A better choice than a variable speed pump for constant pressure is a CSV (cycle stop valve).