Whole house filter and water softener

Prior to commencing my basement demolition I installed a whole house filter and water softener (with pictures).

The water softener was everything I wanted. I no longer have hard water build up in my dishwasher or on the metal components in my bathrooms. It was not that hard to install either. I recommend having a friend that knows how to sweat copper.

To protect the water softener, and all the other components in my house, I decided to install a whole house filter at the same time. Home Depot has them for around $18. The install using the compression fittings was simple, though I would have felt better if we could have sweated the fittings on.

The filter does its job. You can see the particulate that it is stopping from entering my house watter supply. There is just one problem - flow rate. The water softener is rated at almost 9 gallons per minute (GPM). The filter is only rated at 4.5 GPM. This makes for some very interesting showers.

The solution was to add a second whole house filter in parallel. That is to put in a tee and send half the water to one filter and half to another. Between the two of them I now have approximately 9 GPM flow rate. This equals the water softener making it the limiting component for water flow.

This seems to have worked well. Not that I want someone to flush during my next shower but if they do I will still have some water pressure.

Demolition

Demolition has commenced. I now have pictures of the event for all to see.

The basement demo begins

For anyone that has been worried about starting a home improvement project let me say I know where you are coming from. When I moved into my my home my wife and I loved the fact that we had a finished basement but hated the wood paneling.

We discussed attempting to remove it, demolishing it and the old drywall behind it or painting it. Removing the paneling was not going to be an option. It was glued and nailed to the point where any attempt to remove it took paper and sheet rock along with it. We thought we had come up with a novel approach and where going to skim coat over the paneling then paint it. This would prevent the grain and groves from showing through the paint and not require any demolition.

Alas a minor flooding issue pushed our hand. The bottom of the paneling wicked water out of the saturated carpet. This meant that we where going to remove the paneling and drywall and replace the drywall.

We started this last Friday evening. I was amazed at how quickly me, my wife, my two pre-teen boys and a friend of mine where able to remove the majority of the paneling and drywall. There where some areas that required more time (like the stare well) but all in all it was a quick two day project.

One of the advantages of removing all of the drywall is the ability to look at the "bones" of your house. With the wall open I am planning on extending some of the wiring. I also noted some soffits that where built way too big for the ducts they where built to cover. Finally we found that by moving a wall we would gain another 50 square feet or so of "living" space from an over sized laundry room.

I will have pictures posted of the demo soon. So check back when you can.