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Clean water is an essential component for cooking, cleaning, and maintaining personal and environmental hygiene. Essentially, it can help you remain healthy and keep your Arlington, TX, home in good condition.

The water in your residence can come from two sources, a private well or a municipal-government-owned water supply system. Although both sources may bear the promise of a clean water supply, they’re predominantly exposed to various types of contaminants that can be harmful to your health.

Your home’s plumbing system may have an inherent water filtration system, but its efficiency in providing your household with clean water may depend on the type of system installed.

With constant climatic changes, increased water pollution, and growing populations, water resources gradually shrink, leading to reduced access to safe drinking water. It’s currently estimated that about 2.2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe, managed drinking water.

Although you may have a guarantee of the safety of the water you use in your household, it’s nearly impossible to rid the water source of some chemicals and bacteria that may be harmful to your wellbeing. That’s why you should consider installing a water filtration system in your home.

That said, below’s a detailed look at some of the things every homeowner should know about residential systems.

What’s a Water Filtration System?

Ideally, water filtration systems are connected to your home’s main water supply to help decontaminate the water by creating a physical barrier or through a biological or chemical process.

After installation, these units work to filter out various types of water contaminants. These pollutants, which include bacteria, sediments, chlorine, lead, and mercury, can alter the taste and quality of the water available in your residence.

Water that smells or tastes like chlorine is a problem homeowners may encounter frequently. However, chlorine is sometimes used as a preventative treatment meant to keep harmful microbes and bacteria in check. Installing a water filtration system in your home could help eradicate the taste and smell of chlorine without compromising the safety and quality of the water.

These components can also come in handy if the water in your household often comes out with a brown or rusty color, indicative of extensive sediment buildup within the plumbing system or inside your residential water heater. Additionally, you should probably consider asking your preferred plumbing contractor to install a water filtration system if you notice a metallic taste or cloudy appearance in the water you’re using.

How Do Whole-Home Water Filters Work?

The water coming out of your home’s faucets and water-based appliances goes through quite a journey before it eventually reaches there. Essentially, it starts flowing from the natural source, which could be a river, lake, dam, or well, and courses through the earth before it reaches the treatment center.

It may pick up some contaminants along the way, which can change its taste and smell. Although it may be treated before distribution, some contaminants may remain intact. The water can also collect other pollutants due to outdated infrastructure as it leaves the treatment facility.

A similar predicament faces homeowners who use water from wells they’ve dug on their property. Well, water may feature high concentrations of clay, silt, dirt, sand, and mineral sediment buildup.

However, regardless of whether you get your freshwater supply from the local municipal authority or a well, a water filtration system can help guarantee access to clean and contaminant-free water.

Depending on the type of system you install, the water you use in your household will generally go through three stages. Each stage will offer a different level of filtration to help trap as many contaminants as possible. Below’s a detailed look into each process.

Pre-filtration Stage

This stage entails the removal of water contaminants that comprise large particles such as silt and mineral deposits.

Water containing extreme levels of sediment buildup can wreak havoc on your home’s plumbing system and appliances, but a functional, residential system can help catch all these impurities.

However, similar to any other plumbing component in your home, the pre-filtration unit should be well-maintained to guarantee efficient operation all year long. Essentially, plumbing service experts recommend that homeowners should normalize replacing the pre-filtration equipment after every two to three months.

Activated Carbon Stage

The activated carbon stage is responsible for reducing the concentration of chlorine and chloramines in the water. As the name suggests, activated carbon binds and eliminates the molecules of these water pollutants to offer an additional layer of protection.

Post-filtration Stage

If there are any more contaminants left after the first and second processes, they’ll go through the post-filter. During this stage, any sediments or pollutants left in the water will be removed before the water finds its way to your home’s faucets.

Experts in servicing plumbing infrastructure recommend replacing the post-filter after every six to 12 months to ensure that your residential water filtration system remains efficient at all times.

Various Types of Whole-Home Water Filtration Systems

Your Arlington, TX, plumber should be able to offer installation services for the five main types of residential water filtration equipment. They include water softeners, ultraviolet purification systems, carbon filters, acid neutralizers, and sediment filters.

Each water filtration system is designed to handle a specific pollutant or water quality problem, which is why you should understand the composition of the water in your home to ensure you choose the right unit.

You can gain this knowledge by consulting with your plumbing service contractor to see if they can conduct a laboratory-based water analysis or supply a home water testing kit. Below is a comprehensive look at each one of the aforementioned residential water filtration systems.

Water Softeners

These water filtration equipment offer an effective solution for hard water, a common issue that homeowners may encounter. Hard water is often the result of high concentrations of dissolved minerals such as calcium, magnesium, iron, and manganese.

It can cause significant damage to your home’s plumbing components and water-based appliances. In some cases, it may lead to chalky dishes, excessive soap scum in your home’s drainage system, and faded laundry.

Hard water also creates scale, which can block plumbing pipes, affect the operational efficiency of your household appliances, and reduce water pressure.

Additionally, if used for showering, it can cause your skin to become itchy and dry and affect the appearance of your hair. If your home is plagued with hard water, you should ask your local water filtration system expert to install a whole-house water softener.

These systems eradicate hardness-causing minerals through a complex process known as ion exchange. Naturally, minerals such as calcium and magnesium comprise positively charged ions.

On the other hand, whole-home water softeners have resin beads that contain negatively charged ions. When hard water passes through the system, the positively charged ions will be trapped upon contact with the resin beads.

This allows softened water to pass through and ultimately reach your home’s plumbing appliances. If properly installed and maintained, your residential water softener should last for at least 15 years.

Ultraviolet Water Purification Systems

This type of water filtration system is your best option if you’re concerned about the presence of microbes such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites within your home’s water supply.

Ultraviolet water purification systems can be beneficial if you use well water, especially after a natural disaster that may have contaminated the water.

Besides offering access to clean, filtered water, you can also rest easy knowing that these components don’t use chemicals to purify your water and can be pretty efficient in conserving it.

In terms of operation, ultraviolet water purification units use UV light to disintegrate the DNA of any living organisms that may have found habitat in your home’s water supply system. Consequently, this significantly limits their ability to reproduce, and it’ll only be a matter of time before the microorganisms become annihilated.

However, it’s worth noting that UV-based water filtration systems may work best if the water is first treated by another filter, for instance, a sediment filter. This is because large dirt and debris particles may sometimes protect the microscopic organisms from UV light.

That said, with a preliminary filtration system in place, UV water purification systems can effectively get rid of up to 99.9 percent of the microscopic living organisms in your home water supply.

Acid Neutralizers

An acid-neutralizing water filtration system can be a great addition in homes with acidic water. Essentially, acidic water refers to water with a pH of less than seven. This type of water can have detrimental consequences on your residential plumbing system, ranging from pipe corrosion and leaks to green-blue staining.

Although ideally, pure water should have a pH of seven, it gradually becomes acidic as it absorbs carbon dioxide molecules during precipitation. This is often the case for well water since it’s derived from shallow groundwater sources.

Besides that, water can also become acidic due to chemical runoff, which is why you should consider asking your local plumbing service contractor to install an acid neutralizer in your Arlington, TX residence.

Acid-neutralizing water filtration systems use calcite to counter the acidity of the water. Typically described as highly alkaline, calcite is a calcium-rich mineral used to construct the acid neutralizer tank. Once acidic water enters the tank, the calcite dissolves, hence neutralizing the acidity and raising its pH.

Sediment Filters

Sediment filters work to catch and eradicate contaminants such as dirt, clay, sand, and rust flecks from outdated pipes in your home’s water supply. If left unresolved for long, these contaminants can wreak havoc on your residential plumbing infrastructure, causing the pipes to clog, low water pressure, and damage your home’s water-based appliances. They may also lead to turbidity, which refers to the water being cloudy or unsightly.

These filters employ mechanical filtration to ensure that your residence receives an unimpeded supply of clean and safe water all year long. In that regard, they physically bar sediments from entering your home’s water supply. They feature tiny pores that limit the penetration of particulate matter.

Although created with a simple concept, sediment filters are a critical component of any whole-home system. This is because they can improve the operational efficiency of other forms of water filtration, including UV water purification systems, carbon filters, and water softeners.

Carbon Filters

Primarily, carbon filters are an excellent solution for homeowners who constantly complain about the smell and taste of chlorine in their household water. Chlorine is often used by your Arlington, TX, water utility service provider to kill harmful bacteria that may be living in the water or inside the carrier pipes.

Although it’s considered safe for humans, water that tastes or smells like chlorine can be repulsive. Installing a carbon filter in your home will ensure you get safe water from the tap. Carbon filters can also reduce the concentration of chemicals found in herbicides and pesticides.

This brand of water filtration system features activated carbon, which has copious amounts of pores scattered along its surface. When water comes into contact with the activated carbon, chemicals, and organic compounds get captured or changed through adsorption.

After this process, clean water comes out on the other side of the system. Past that, activated catalytic carbon can also reduce the concentration of chloramines in your household water.

Chloramines, an alternative water treatment option to chlorine, are predominantly used in most regions to treat municipal water supply systems. They’re notably challenging to separate from water, but catalytic carbon water filtration systems can effectively break apart chloramine molecules more efficiently than conventional activated carbon filters.

Benjamin Franklin Plumbing of Fort Worth; A Premier Choice for Your Arlington, TX, Water Filtration System Installation

If you need to install water filtration equipment in your Arlington, TX, residence, don’t hesitate to contact the professionals at Benjamin Franklin Plumbing of Fort Worth. We offer a wide selection of quality products, and our experts can help you find the most appropriate solutions based on your budget and household needs.