A whole house water filter treats water at its point it enters your home and supplies clean water everywhere you need it. Whole house filtration systems come in many different forms, including water softeners, UV water purifiers, or carbon filters. John Woodard, our Master Water Specialist, explains why whole house filtration is worth it and how to choose the best whole house water filters.

What is a whole house water filtration system?
A whole house filtration system could be a lot of things depending upon what you’re filtering. If you’re on a well supply, for example, the filtration system could be very elaborate. It could have a mechanical sediment filter, followed by a water softener, followed by an ultraviolet system. A whole house filtration system like this would soften, take out debris, and disinfect the water as it comes into the house. Whole-house filtration on a city water supply may just to get rid of sediment and chlorine or chloramine. But a whole house filter treats all the water entering the home so that all the water flowing into washing machines, dishwashers, coffee brewers, or shower heads is filtered.

What does a whole house water filtration system do?
The design of a particular whole house filter is made to filter out the contaminants you don’t want in the household water supply. You may want to remove iron, hardness, or just chlorine. What whole house filtration system you need will be determined by what’s in the water supply that needs filtering out. Your whole house water filter could include a water softener to remove iron, or it could be more elaborate and include a process called aeration or oxidation. The type of whole house filtration used is driven by what undesirable things are making water a problem for your home.

Are there different types of whole house water filtration systems?
Absolutely. The different types are determined by your water quality and the problems you’re trying to eliminate with the whole house filtration system. If you’re on city water, the variety of products is more limited. The main issue is to get rid of chlorine. That taste and odor that comes from the disinfectant that municipalities put in the water supply. It’s good that they disinfect the water because it reduces deaths from typhoid, cholera, or diphtheria. But once chlorine gets to your home, it can be removed so that you can wash clothes and take showers without chlorinated water. And you certainly don’t want to drink the chlorine.

For a well supply, there are a variety of whole house filtration options for different water problems, whether they involve chemicals, minerals, or gases like hydrogen sulfide that give a rotten egg smell. Getting rid of these contaminants may involve many steps and different technologies. The list of different whole house water filtration systems is long.