Compact Cartridge-Style Whole House (Point-of-Entry) Water Filters:
Exceptional Performance at a Modest Cost
To read this special issue on our website.
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Sturdy Pentek Housing Used in Our Compact Whole House Filter Series. The "20-inch" Big Blue" unit accepts standard 4.5" X 20" filter cartridges. The housing is simple, strong, and easy to open for cartridge service. |
Our most popular whole house filter uses one of the most standard filter cartridge sizes. Many cartridge options are available.
The hefty Pentek filter vessel comes with a strong aluminum mounting bracket, screws, a wrench for cartridge changes, and a single filter cartridge. It's a simple but very effective whole house filter.
Our compact Black & White series cartridge-style point-of-entry systems are highly effective, easily maintained units designed to filter all water entering homes, small businesses, and restaurants. It's a perfect size cartridge filter for most residential users, but these filters can be installed in parallel if higher flow rates are needed.
As currently offered on our web page,
They come in the following three basic styles:
Style A : Particulate filtration down to 5 microns. Removes sand, rust and other sediment to produce more aesthetically pleasing water. Especially applicable to wells, but an excellent city water sediment filter as well.
Style B : Carbon block filtration down to nominal 2 microns. The carbon block filter removes chlorine and general chemical contaminants while providing clearer, better tasting water. Style B is most often used on chlorinated city water, but it can improve taste and odor and deal with moderate amounts of hydrogen sulfide in well water.
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Whole House filtration gives you high quality, disinfectant-free water from every tap in the house, for bathing and laundry, for pets and plants. (If you want to know what's really going on in the picture, you'll have to read "Medical Heresy in the Nineteenth Century: Women and the Water Cure" from the Pure Water Gazette's archive.) |
Style C : A double system that consists of one of each, Style A followed by Style B. The sediment filter provides protection for the carbon cartridge from premature failure due to particulate blockage in high-sediment areas. It can be used on either city water systems or wells.
These are simple units that last indefinitely if protected from weather. Warranty is for three years. The unit needs only periodic cartridge change.
Usual life of the carbon filter cartridge used in Style B is about one year on chlorinated city water. The standard carbon cartridge is the unequaled MatriKX VOC extruded carbon block. The VOC is a hefty coconut shell carbon block with eight times the filtration capacity of a drinking-water size cartridge. It is rated by independent tests for 42,000 gallons of dechlorination on ordinary city tap water. Most users change the cartridge annually. Our local customers use if for chloramine reduction with excellent result.
The sediment filter, Style A, uses a high quality 5-micron 4.5" X 20" wound string cartridge to trap suspended particulate. Its lifespan depends on the quality of the water, and it is changed when flow becomes noticeably slower. Cartridge replacement is easy. (Wrench included.)
Filter housing dimensions are 23.5" tall and 7.25" diameter at the top. When mounted on the bracket, the unit stands about 9” from the wall.
Versatility
The compact whole house filter is single-bracket mounted to allow the installer great freedom of arrangement. To explain, double filters come with two single-filter brackets. The two single filters, connected by 1" pipe, can be mounted to flow left to right in a series, or they can be installed in parallel, so that the water stream is split and each filter handles only half the service flow. This single-bracket system gives the installer great freedom and allows for innovative system design.
For m0re information about versatility and flow rate capacity for these units, and for increased flow rate suggestions, read this short article from our main website.
The standard sediment and carbon block cartridges mentioned above are ideal for most residential situations. But we also have a number of alternative cartridges for special purposes.
You can see details about the cartridges that fit this filter on our website's cartridge menu. Any cartridge on this page will fit the compact whole house units. Here's a summary:
| Sediment cartridges in three styles (wound string, pleated poly, and "melt blown." | Micron sizes 1, 5, 20, and 50. |
| Chloramine Specific Cartridges | Two Pentek cartridges that are designed specifically to reduce chloramines. One is a carbon block and the other a unique "radial flow granular." |
| Iron Removal | Pentek's famous iron reduction cartridge. An excellent solution for wells with moderate amounts of iron. |
| Choice of carbon blocks. | We have 3 MatriKX blocks that fit this unit. VOC (formerly called KX-5), the standard cartridge for the unit, is a2 micron coconut shell block. We also have the tighter CTO Plus (formerly Kx-1--a 0.6 micron filter) and the freer flowing CTO (5 micron). |
| Granular Carbons | Both Coconut Shell and Centaur catalytic granular cartridges. The Centaur cartridge is a specific for chloramines or hydrogen sulfide. |
| Sub-Micron | We now stock Nano Ceram in this size. It's a unique cartridge capable of bacteria removal. It's an expensive cartridge, but it's lifespan is long. A "nano" cartridge that will remove viruses, it can also remove lead and heavy metals. It's a tight but very free-flowing cartridge. You'll do best to protect it with a sediment prefilter, but you'll get the same bacteria performance as from submicron filters now being sold at many times the cost. |
Standard port size for these units is 1", but you can ask for it in 1.5" --the price is the same. It can, of course, be installed on 3/4" pipe with simple pipe bushings.
Larger and Smaller
Although the 4.5" X 20" units described above are are most popular cartridge-style whole house filters, we also offer smaller and larger units.
Smaller:
1. Ten inch "Big Blue" size, that accepts 4.5" X 10" cartridges, half as long as the filters
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| 10-inch Clear Housing, popular for sediment filters because it allows inspection of the cartridge without opening the housing. Clear housings cost more, but sometimes the convenience is worth the higher price. All whole house housings come with a pressure release button to facilitate cartridge change (that's the red button on the housing cap). |
described above. This size is used especially for sediment filters, but we also have compact carbon blocks. See the clear unit at right, and get full details on our main website.
2. Twenty inch length, half diameter (2.5" X 20") filters for light duty whole house use with lower flow rates. These are available with carbon block, sediment, and a few specialty cartridges. See on our main website.
Larger:
We have two very large whole house cartridge filters.
One is the famous Big Bubba, a Watts product that uses its own proprietary jumbo cartridges. It is used mainly for very high flow sediment filtration, but we also have a carbon block cartridge that makes it a very high flow option. See Big Bubba here.
Also in the high flow category is our sturdy stainless steel 4-cartridge whole house filter. Also designed for high flow rates, it uses four sediment cartridges or four carbon blocks. The unit takes four 2.5" X 20" carbon blocks and provides a comfortable flow rate of 10 to 15 gallons per minute for city water dechlorination. For more information about the stainless steel unit, visit our main website.
Specialty Whole House
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| Stainless steel whole house unit uses four 2.5" X 20" cartridges. |
For well customers who need protection from bacterial contamination, we have Pura whole house cartridge filters with ultraviolet added. They use 2.5" X 20" cartridges (UV20 Series) and 4.5" X 20" cartridges (BB Series). Please see these on our website devoted exclusively to Pura ultraviolet units.
A Final Word About Whole House Filters
Whole house filters are not designed to replace a drinking water filter. Drinking water units have the advantages of a slow flow rate and limited production requirement. Many specialty resins and very tight micron ratings are available for use with drinking water filters that aren't practical for whole house units.
Whole house filters produce excellent water for bathing and general household use, and the drinking water that comes from every tap in the home will be much better than before. Nevertheless, issues like lead removal, fluoride reduction, and TDS (total dissolved solids) reduction are next to impossible for a whole house filter. A whole house filter complements a good drinking water system, it doesn't replace it.
We welcome information requests via phone or email.
Pure Water Products
940 382 3814