The house here in Idaho has a soft water system already hooked to the house. As a family we decided very quickly that we all hated it and I turned it off and bypassed it within a couple weeks f being here. But the family did want a whole house water filter. we had one at our place in Chandler and so we decided we wanted the same thing here as well.
Well, the company I bought the previous one from no longer exists, and so after much research by myself and my father-in-law a new one was decided upon: The Pentair PC1000. I was able to order it from Home Depot on sale and get it delivered to my house. Then I had to figure out how to install it. I watched the video and they recommended buying a Pelican (owned by Pentair) easy installation kit, so I did. After getting everything I realized that I still needed some copper soldering to occur to get this all done correctly. And since I no longer live near my father to borrow a torch from I was going to need to either buy a torch or hire a plumber. I thought buying a torch for one job seemed like a waste of money so I needed to hire a plumber. Of course I don’t know any plumbers here and I don’t know that many people. So, I let things sit for a couple weeks, and that ended up being a good thing.
I have been trying to sell the moving boxes we had in our garage for months. I had sold (or given away) about half of them, and was ready to call the relocation company and have them pickup the rest of them when I was contact by someone that wanted to buy the rest of the boxes form me. I was very pleased and a gentleman came over on a Friday and picked the rest of them up. While talking to him I learned he worked for a construction company and I asked if he knew and trusted any plumbers that did small jobs like I needed. He said he did and would pass on my info to him. Sunday I got a call from Tim the plumber. He came over the next day and looked at the job and told me what he would charge me. It sounded more than fair and I agreed. Also he said he would take the water softener and reduced the overall cost a little for my job. His plan was to return on Friday to do the job.
Now time for my part of the job. The filter has to be filled with water for at least 48 hours prior to installation for the filter media to soak and settle. The video shows a hose adaptor being attached to the filter and you fill it with your hose. So, I get the hose adaptor from the filter box and go to hook it up and… it doesn’t fit. The adaptor is still small. Then I dug through the box to see if I was missing something, but not that I could find. I tried calling Pentair, but they said they would only talk to professional plumbers and that they were closing for the day. And I found out that they had discontinued this product in the last few weeks as well. Then I called my father-in-law to get his 2-cents: Should I return it and find something else (no, we did lots of research and this was the best one for a fair price for what we wanted). Should I try and buy another one and return this one (no, there aren’t any available since they have been discontinued). After much time on the phone and internet it was determined that the issue was the the top manifold had been changed to a different model and that model wasn’t compatible with the hose adaptor. AND it wasn’t compatible with the $250 “easy connect” purchase that I made at the same time. Then I started to figure out how to get a hose adaptor onto the filter. So off the Lowes, then Home Depot, then Ace Hardware, then a plumbing store, and I find that the manifold that Pentair is using has a special sized connection that doesn’t match with ANYTHING else out there (why would you do that?). 2 hours I won’t get back of my life.
I was ready to give up and just return the whole thing and figure out something else. Then I realized, like a flash across my vision, that Pentair supplied a way to go from the filter manifold to regular pipe, so once I got home from my kids dance practice I checked that part and sure enough it was standard 1″ NPT. I was able to build an adaptor from 1″ NPT male to the garden hose male and was able to fill the filter up. And I was able to return the $250 “easy connection kit” to Home Depot. Without that it just means that the connection will all be done with hard line instead which it what I had done in Chandler and what I expected to have done originally with this one.
2 days later I did the next hose hookup that the installation video talked about and then drained the tank Friday morning so it was movable (the thing weighs a ton when it is full of water) and ready to go. I also cut a piece of wood to mount to the wall to then mount the pre-filter to once all the plumbing gets figured out.
The plumber showed up Friday morning and we started by mapping it all out. We got all the idea of what I wanted down and then he headed to the store to get the materials. He wasn’t able to get the 1″ copper fittings at Home Depot or Lowes so he had to head over to an actual plumbing store. Once he got back he made the comment, “Copper is still expensive.” And boy it is. It was $643 in copper. I was surprised, and he said he was as well to some degree. It would have cost me the same as well so that was a cost that I couldn’t get around. We uninstalled the water softener and got it all out of the way.
Then he started by installing the H-shaped bypass into the system so that we could get the water off and then back on to the house as quickly as possible. That was nice of him. After that it was just all about getting the pipe where it needed to go and get everything all hooked up. It took him a lot longer than I expected it to, but he was doing his best to make sure that he wasted as little copper as possible, and run the pipe such that it was out of the way, but also not over complex.
It took all day but it looks good now. The plumber had the great idea to keep it on the garage floor rather than up on the raised area like the water softener was so that I could more easily get it out to replace the filter material as needed. That was determined after the pre filter location was already all hooked up. That is why it may look a little over plumbed.
Here is a picture:
Finally, since the plumber took my old water softener as majority payment he only charged me $75 for his time (which as I said was all day). So I am happy. We are having quite a bit of carbon pushing through for some reason so I have it bypassed at the moment to let it all settle again after getting moved around and drained and such. So, hopefully in a day or two our home will once again have whole house water filtration (and no soft water, thank the Lord).