A couple years ago, a luxury hotel had attempted to filter their entire water supply. Their desire was to provide their guest with the best experience possible. While with good intentions this also gave way to some negative consequences. Understanding what to remove and what to leave in your water supply can affect not just the taste and odor of the water, but the safety of the water as well. This particular facility had wanted to remove all the chlorine from their incoming water supply and made the decision to utilize a whole building system to do so. The side effect of removing all antibacterial properties in a large water system is the introduction of bacterial growth after the point of entry system. This bacteria growth will occur in the piping after the filtration system and will cause exposure to the user’s downstream. What Filter Pure would have recommended was utilizing a mechanical filtered system with Ultraviolet at the point of entry. This would eliminate any possible contaminants entry into the building water supply. It also maintains the appropriate levels of disinfectant to ensure pipes are not permitting bacterial growth. 
For taste and odor concern, these should always be handled at the point of use with a system similar to the Insurice Single PF-i2000 system (EV9324-21). We recommend Everpure for all water point of use systems. Every location has different water quality concerns that require direct and special attention. If you have any questions regarding your facility’s water filtration systems, please contact me, Todd Leach, or our customer service team at 1-800-942-7873. Ask me a questions!
Tag: healthy water
Don’t Forget About the O-Ring!
First, what is an O-ring? An O-ring is a doughnut, or torus shaped seal typically used to prevent the passing of air or fluid. O-rings are used to keep fluid or air IN or OUT of a defined space. This device helps to keep the water tight or air tight integrity of a filter housing or filter application. O-rings come in a wide variety of sizes and different types of materials; Types of Material
- Buna-N®
- Ethylene, Propylene
- Silicon Encapsulated with FEP, an FDA-approved material
- Silicone (Solid)
- Teflon® (Solid)
- Teflon® Encapsulated with FEP
- Viton® (Solid)
To extend the o-ring’s effectiveness there are some things you can do: Remove and inspect the o-ring at every filter change or every time the housing is opened, as well as applying the manufacturer’s approved lubricant. The protectant/gel, usually made of silicon is inexpensive and is easy to apply. If there are signs of any wear or improper form of the o-ring, the o-ring must be replaced immediately prior to restarting the filter system. 
The life of an o-ring varies based on how you take care of it and what it is made of. It is very important to your operation to make sure you have the proper o-ring for your filtration application. If you have any questions on changing out your o-rings or whether you are using the proper o-ring for your system, I invite you to submit a question below or call our team at 1-800-942-7873. Click here to ask us a question!
How Often Do I Change My Water Filter?
One of the most common questions we hear from our customers is in regards to how frequently a water filter cartridge should be changed. Whether it’s a standard sediment or carbon filter, every customer has one key priority in mind: How Long Will I Have Dependably Clean, Great Tasting Water? In other words, how can I be sure that my filter is still reducing the impurities that can impact the flavor of my water? Our standard answer: It depends. The frequency of filter changes depends upon your water quality and your water usage. For example, if there are a lot of sediment particulates in your water, then you will have to change your filters more frequently than someone with little to no sediment. If you are a large restaurant consuming large amounts of water a minute or a hospital with large ice machines, then your usage will demand more frequent filter changes. Having said that, we suggest replacement schedules that are generally as follows: Everpure High Flow CRS Quad MC2 System 
The most common Everpure Filtration System, mainly seen in the back of the house of restaurants should be changed every 6 months, or every 36,000 gallons. The EC210 prefilter, to the left of the MC2 filters, should be changed more frequently to extend the life of the MC2 filters. We recommend every 3-4 months. Insurice Triple PF i4000(2) System w/ 20″ Prefilter 
For water filtration on ice machines, sometimes it can be difficult knowing when to change the filters, especially if you see no difference in the ice. But even if the ice is fine, deep inside the machine inches of scale can be forming and ruining your machine. That’s why it is important to keep a filter change out schedule. We recommend every 6 months or however many gallons are specified on the water filters. For the system pictured to the left, the Insurice Triple PF i4000(2), change those filters every 36,000 gallons of use. Again, changing the prefilter will give your primary cartridges longer life. You should also replace your water filters whenever you notice a decline in performance, whether it is a drop in flow rate and/or pressure, or an unusual taste in the water. You should also, per the CDC, replace your water filter after any boil water advisory alert is lifted in your area. Remember: taste and odor may tip you off to the presence of chlorine in your water, but most contaminants are tasteless and odorless. For the benefit of our customers, we have set-up automatic electronic reminders that are sent when we see that their filters are due to be replaced, based on order history. We can even set-up Auto-Ship for customers that know they will need water filters by a certain date, but may not remember to place an order. If you have a water filter or filter model not included in the list above, and have a question regarding how often you should replace your filter, I invite you to submit a question below or call our team at 1-800-942-7873. Click here to ask us a question!
Meet the OW Family!
This lovely family of water filter cartridges delivers premium quality drinking water for bottleless coolers and drinking fountains. Their unique filter blend uses activated carbon to reduce chlorine taste and odor and other offensive contaminants. Like most of Everpure’s carbon water filters, the OW family contains a precoat submicron technology which reduces dirt and particles as small as 1/2 micron in size. Check out my blog about Microns to see how small a 1/2 micron really is! But beware of the GIARDIA cyst!! The OW family inhibits scale from building up in your home water cooler, your water dispenser, or your drinking fountains. Keep an eye out for my up-coming blog about Scale!! Let’s break down this family and see what’s unique about each filter! The OW200L (P/N EV9619-06) has a rated capacity of 480 gallons. Its overall dimensions are 17″H x 3.25″ diameter. Its service flow rate is at maximum 0.5 gpm. This cartridge is commonLY used in office drinking water systems and home drinking water systems. In fact, that’s what I have installed under my sink at home. The OW2-PLUS (P/N EV9634-01) and the OW4-PLUS (P/N EV9635-01) are essentially the same. The only difference is their capacity rating and size. The OW2-PLUS is rated at 1,000 gallons and 10.25″H x 3.25″ Diameter. The OW4-PLUS is rated at 2,000 gallons and 14.5″H x 3.25″ diameter. But unlike the OW200L, they both contain a KDF media that can remove lead to below the Federal Action Level of 10 ppb. All the OW replacement water filter cartridges are NSF Certified under NSF/ANSI Standards 42 and 53, which means these cartridges get the job done! We gladly stock the OW family and for more information about the OW family, contact us at 1-800-942-7873 or click on the “Live Help ONLINE” link on the left of your screen.
Water Filtration System in a Straw
LifeStraw makes previously contaminated water drinkable by removing bacteria and viruses. Sometimes, it’s the simplest technologies that have the greatest potential impact on people’s lives. Take the Vestergaard Frandsen Group’s mobile personal filtration system, otherwise known as LifeStraw. It is a powder-blue plastic tube—much thicker than an ordinary straw—containing filters that make water teeming with typhoid-,cholera- and diarrhea-causing microorganisms drinkable. Now, to be clear, we do not sell this item…yet. We just love to report what’s going on out there in the water purification world. The filters, made up of a halogenated resin, kill nearly 100 percent of bacteria and nearly 99 percent of the viruses that pass through LifeStraw. A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill evaluation tested the device’s performance in water containing Escherichia coli B and Enterococcus faecalisbacteria and the MS2 coliphage virus as well as iodine and silver. The results indicated that LifeStraw filtered out all contaminants to levels where they don’t pose a health risk to someone drinking the water.
But the device does not filter heavy metals such as iron or fluoride nor does it remove parasites like cryptosporidium or giardia, although the Switzerland-based company’s CEO, Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, says there is a version of LifeStraw available to relief groups in Bangladesh and India that can filter arsenic. At less than 10 inches (25 centimeters) long, the device can filter up to 185 gallons (700 liters) of water, estimated to be about a year’s supply for one person. The device is no longer usable when its filters become too clogged to pass water through, typically after a year of hard use.
The success of the personal filtration system led Vestergaard Frandsen to introduce earlier this month its LifeStraw Family device, an instant microbiological purifier that provides about 2.6 gallons (10 liters) of safe drinking water in an hour and about 4,000 gallons (15,000 liters) over its life span for a family of six. LifeStraw Family is designed to sieve dirt, parasites, bacteria and viruses, and will be available starting in May. Larry Greenemeier www.scientificamerican.com
News From Pentair's Water Initiatives
More than one billion people around the world, most of them in developing nations, lack access to safe water. The result is that preventable waterborne diseases continue to be a leading cause of illness and death globally. Every day, approximately 25,000 people, mainly children in developing countries, die from preventable waterborne diseases, according to the World Health Organization. Pentair has been in search of a solution that not only brings safe water to communities in need, but also ensures that the solution is sustainable at the community level, taking into consideration the complex economic, cultural and geographical constraints that need to be addressed. The solution also needs to have validating methods and standard practices that can be replicated around the world. To accomplish this, the Pentair Foundation funded a multi-year research program in remote Colón, Honduras. The results of the five year program and the impact on the lives of the people in Colón have been profound. The results demonstrated that sustainable access to safe water and adequate sanitation can be provided cost-effectively, and that the health and welfare of the recipients can be significantly improved. Additionally, to ensure that safe treated water continues to be available beyond Pentair’s initial funding period, a microenterprise business model was established, where the local community owns the water treatment systems and users pay their communities a nominal fee for potable water. The individual user fee is established by the local community to cover the ongoing operation and maintenance of their system. Once installed, the system costs pennies per person per day to operate. Leveraging this success, Pentair is partnering around the world by putting its grants, technology and talent to work for communities in need of clean drinking water. By engaging community partners and equipping them with our extensive product portfolio and technical water distribution systems expertise, we are measurably improving water safety and sanitation worldwide. Understanding that everyone’s efforts add up to more effective answers, Pentair is leading through partnership to find a sustainable solution to the global water crisis. Pentair invites others to join in working toward a world where everyone has access to quality water supply. We are making our findings and models publicly available to other organizations and municipalities interested in replicating these cost-effective methods. By turning industry insights into collaborative proactive plans and on-the-ground tools, we are confident that even the most challenging issues can be solved when we unite around smart ideas. Reference: Pentair.com
What Your Unfiltered Water Contains…
Think about where your water comes from….and we don’t just mean the sink! Expand your mind and remember that water comes from unclean, natural resources like rivers and lakes, which contain pollution and contaminants that are unfit for consumption. To be clean, the water should undergo a number of treatments necessary to make it drinkable.
Specifically in tap water is:
- Toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury, copper, cadmium and aluminum
- Volatile organic chemicals, such as pesticides and herbicides
- Pharmaceuticals
- Chemicals from irresponsible manufacturers
- Personal care chemicals
- Household cleaning products
- Water treatment additives such as chlorine, fluoride, and other toxic chemicals
- Bacteria and viruses such as giardia, cryptosporidium, coliform and E-coli
- Toxic Heavy Metals
Water purifiers are specifically designed to eliminate or reduce these certain pollutants that are in our drinking water. They also improve the quality and taste of the water by eliminating its chlorine content. It is virtually impossible to know what is in tap water at any given time because municipal water quality as well as private well water varies from place to place, season to season, and house to house. Even if all of the toxic metals could be completely filtered at the local water treatment facility, they could still end up in your drinking water because rust and sediment build up in the water pipes within our homes. Even this minimal exposure can cause symptoms similar to the flu, such as headaches, diarrhea, cramps, nausea or vomiting. The only way we can have any control over the quality of water we drink is by having a personal water filter system. Filtered drinking water is the most reliable and least expensive way to get healthy water!
SAVE MONEY FROM FILTERED WATER!
Think of all the things you currently want right now. Maybe it is a new t-shirt, a fancy dinner out, or even a mini vacation? What if we told you we know how you can obtain those things quicker than you think by saving significant money where you didn’t think possible? By switching from bottled water to home water filtration, you will notice a fast, easy and impactful transition into a more economic and environmentally sound way of life. Sounds good, right? Because it is!
Why Go To the “Trouble”, You Ask?
- Home water filtration offers better quality water than bottled.
- Home water filtration is 1/10th the cost of bottled.
- Home water filtration is far more convenient, offering “Pure water on tap.”
- Home water filtration is virtually pollution free.
According to waterfiltercomparisons.com, over 60,000,000 plastic bottles a day are disposed of in U.S. landfills from bottled water use! That is a lot of wasted plastic and resources. It takes three times the amount of water to produce the bottle as it does to fill it. Not to mention the pollution from transporting heavy loads of bottled water all over the World. Talk about an oxymoron! H2O, a vital and necessary component to keep us healthy is also polluting our environment and depleting our valuable resources – the madness! The reality is that people pay from $1 to $4 a gallon for the perception of higher quality, when in fact; the quality of bottled water is at best an unknown. We never truly see our water coming from the pristine aquifers it is said to originate. Instead we go off blind faith that it is the truth. Let’s start using our blind faith in a slightly different manner and trusting in Home water purification. Home water purification is by far the most economical, most convenient and most effective way of producing high quality, healthy water. By filtering out the chlorine, lead and other contaminants, home water filtration systems are the best way to know for sure about the quality of your drinking water. It’s also the most economical and the most environmentally responsible. It’s the right choice. Shop FilterPure today to begin your economic and environmental switch to being cleaner, healthier and richer! Our wide variety of premium water filters have made us leaders of the industry and have received national exposure. Whatever your filtration needs, you can trust FilterPure to deliver a sparkling clear solution!
Bromination Systems
What is Bromination? When compared to chlorination, Bromination is safer to use, provides equivalent disinfection more easily, and won’t corrode your plumbing system like chlorine does. The result of using Everpure Bromination is a material suited to the water treatment requirements of cruise vessels, navy ships, recreational boats, work boats and off-shore platforms. The ease and efficiency of using a Bromination system with replaceable cartridges is far more desirable than the time consuming and unpleasant task of preparing chlorine solutions from dry chlorine powder. What are the benefits of Bromination systems? Water safety and quality is vital to your ship’s operation and crew’s morale. Protecting your crew and passengers from water- and food-borne illnesses is only one major reason Everpure Bromination makes sense.
- Great tasting water – Bromine is about four times less taste-intrusive than chlorine and is often undetectable at normal concentrations.
- Safer to handle – Polybromide resin does not carry a fire hazard safety warning and can be safely stored and handled without fear of skin burns. It will not corrode your plumbing systems the way chlorine does.
- Simple to operate – Just change the brominator cartridge according to your equipment or system schedule and you will have great tasting, healthy water for longer than if you were to use chlorine.
- Safe, reliable water – Bromination protects more reliably than chlorine by disinfecting water over a wider pH range than chlorine.
- Simplifying your water treatment – Bromination Systems save man-hours, reduce corrosion and plumbing damage and deliver a constant bromine-to-water ratio from automatic proportioning technology.
In short, the Everpure Bromination System is a complete system that will simplify the way you think about water treatment. Filter Pure offers many Everpure Bromination System options and complimentary products. Shop with us today at https://dev-filterpure.pantheonsite.io/Everpure-Marine.aspx and browse our wide variety of Bromination products!
A Little About Filter Pure
Founded in 1981, Filter Pure Systems, Inc. has grown to become recognized as a leader in quality, reliability, and innovation. That’s why experts in the know—like Coca-Cola, Walt Disney, major restaurant chains, cruise lines, the U.S. Military, and many others have chosen Filter Pure Systems, Inc. for their water filtration needs. And while our water filtration systems protect the needs of national restaurant chains, the water we care most about is yours. Founded by Rusty Lowe, who wanted to provide clean drinking water to his family, friends and customers, our commitment is to ensure every glass you drink is sparkling clear. We have been at the forefront of many innovations resulting in higher levels of filtration and reliability. Throughout our 30 year history, we’ve led the industry with products that perform under the most demanding circumstances, and have been featured on Good Morning America, Dateline NBC, and HGTV. So, whatever your water filtration needs, trust Filter Pure Systems to deliver a sparkling clear solution. 