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.