water filtration

[ric]

Saturday spent about 5 hours re-charging the charcol filter. There must be an easier way to do this especially if I have this to look forward to about every three years or so. Seems the water has lost it's moldy smell. Sunday things got worse. 10 hours to re-plumb the lines for the chlorine injection to make it easier to change injector nozzles and find problems. The original water company and their so-called plumber kinda just threw everything together squirted some glue on it and left. Now all the pipe is where I can get to it easily plus I now have a large sediment filter in the line. Took all day to remove, measure, locate, fit and assemble it. One of those if you want it done right do it yourself projects. Thinking back it took two guys almost ten hours to create this mess that I paid big bucks for, so 10 hours by myself to create what I wanted to begin with isn't too bad I guess. Now if I need to add or change something I can now do it easily. Only have 4 small leaks which I will likely fix this week. Still have not made a decision on UV yet. ric

 

[Devildog]

Ric, Glad to hear you got it all back together and operating good.

When we have to replace carbon we have to suck the old out and inject the new. It takes about a tandom dumptruck load per filter and we have 12 of them, which we rotate and do 4 every 3 years.

As far as the plumbing goes when we plumb in some new feed equipment we have to submit plans from our engineering department to the health dept for approval, even though we have a easier way of doing it.(go figure)

Also in my opinion UV light is the best disinfection, No chemicals to mix.
_________________________________________________
Take care Bro, Jim



2001 B7500 HST 302 Fel R4 Tires, Befco BRB60
Semper Fidelis

 

[ric]

Jim, Think I'm going to hold off changing to UV for now. The Ohio EPA has no plans to approve this for public drinking water. The Ohio Dept of Health has developed and published guidelines for UV but they have not approved any UV units for compliance (catch 22). Meaning, although I could purchase any unit that I liked I would not be in compliance with their guidelines if the unit were not approved. It's true this would likely only come up if I sold my house and stated the system was used for drinking water. However, until then me, my wife and my pig would be using this system and I'd rather we stay healthy. Setting aside the compliance issues, the theory of operation and potential benefits look good on paper. However, there are practical daily use considerations that make installing UV questionable at best. There's the high cost, $700+ per unit, source water variables such as flow rate and clarity, (too dirty or too fast the level of disinfection declines quickly), immediate declining disinfection rate (the microwatt rating of the bulb declines at a steady pace starting the day you turn it on until it blows calling into question the purity of the water in the last half of the life of the bulb)and the lack of easily verfiable disinfection monitoring. Beyond what UV will do there's the gray area of what they might do. It seems, every supplier suggests UV systems are reliable deterrents to crypto and girardia. I'm not sure they really are as each supplier eventually tells you you will need a 1 micron filter in the line with their system. 1 micron filters are used to remove bacterial cysts which is what crypto and girardia are. This also happens to be the same verbage in the private water system guidleines for most states that have comprehensive water purification guidelines that regulate residential compliance. While I wait for these things to shake out, I'll just continue to put up with what I have, fix the leaks, add a roof washer/filter and add a 1 micron filter under the sink filter in the kitchen. Thanks for your help, if anything comes up let me know, ric