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advice needed on water filter position and plumbing


Tessy

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I have a 10 inch filter under my sink that filters water after it exits my domestic pump. However the water tees off to the hot water tank before it goes to the filter. Therefore only the cold taps in kitchen, bathroom and shower are filtered. The filter is physically 40cm or so higher up than the pump and the tee off. I want to move the tee from before the filter to after it, so that ALL my water goes through it. Will this cause other issues? I'm not sure why it would have been set up like this by previous owner. Maybe they took the view that filter was only needed for drinking water but seems silly to me not to filter hot water too. 

 

Currently I have a new 5 micron carbon block filter in there, and flow seems perfectly fine. I put all my drinking water through an additional propur gravity fed filter system. 

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1 minute ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

This is the normal way to plumb such a filter in, just in to the cold pipe to the kitchen tap. Do you drink from the hot tap? With it taking all the water it will get blocked up and need replacing a lot more quickly.

I shower with the hot tap and will catch the spare water from it while i'm waiting for it to get hot and pass this through the propur for drinking later, and don't like the idea of sediment building up in the hot tank. I'm happy to replace the filter every few months rather than every six if thats the only reason not to

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The normal way is to have the filter in the cold feed to the galley tap.

 If you want to be different that is your choice, but why bother asking f you seem to be convinced that you need to filter all the water rather than doing what is the norm?

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4 minutes ago, Tessy said:

I shower with the hot tap and will catch the spare water from it while i'm waiting for it to get hot and pass this through the propur for drinking later, and don't like the idea of sediment building up in the hot tank. I'm happy to replace the filter every few months rather than every six if thats the only reason not to

What sediment in the hot tank? Why should your hot tank be any different to a domestic one,  especially if you have a plasic or stainless water tank.

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Most pumps have a mesh pre-filter ahead of them to trap the larger particles. These typically take many years to bung up. It would take centuries, maybe millennia to get a significant amount of sediment building up in a calorifier. Since the hot water is drawn from the top, then it doesn't matter. In a thousand years time, you could just take the calorifer out of the boat, rinse the sediment out and reinstall it ready for another thousand years. It only might be shorter than this time if you had a rusty steel water tank, in which case the better thing to do is to fix that.

Never heard of anyone doing what you're planning before.

Edited by Jen-in-Wellies
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Making an assumption that your calorifier is copper, there is advice about drinking water that has come from a 'hot copper source'

Government advice :

 

Avoid cooking with or drinking water from hot water taps, because hot water dissolves copper more readily than cold water does.

 

Cold water is not affected in the same way.

 

I was always taught not to drink any water that has come via a 'hot tap' and the first 'bit' that is cold should either be left to run down the drain or used to water plants, etc etc but NEVER drunk.

Filtering does not remove the copper out of the water.

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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8 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

I was always taught not to drink any water that has come via a 'hot tap' and the first 'bit' that is cold should either be left to run down the drain or used to water plants, etc etc but NEVER drunk.

Filtering does not remove the copper out of the water.

I was taught the same. I suspect this comes from the traditional way of plumbing household water in the UK, where it comes from a tank in the attic, then ether to the non-kitchen cold taps, or through whatever heating arrangement there is, to a hot water tank, then to the taps. The header tank in the attic traditionally was open topped and always had a dead pigeon in it! The cold water kitchen tap was always direct from the incoming mains and was reckoned to be good for drinking, but no other.

Jen

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Just now, Jen-in-Wellies said:

I was taught the same. I suspect this comes from the traditional way of plumbing household water in the UK, where it comes from a tank in the attic, then ether to the non-kitchen cold taps, or through whatever heating arrangement there is, to a hot water tank, then to the taps. The header tank in the attic traditionally was open topped and always had a dead pigeon in it! The cold water kitchen tap was always direct from the incoming mains and was reckoned to be good for drinking, but no other.

Jen

 

Indeed there was the possibility of 'Avian contamination' (but we did have a wooden board over ours), but it was more the aspect of excessive copper build up in the human body (liver damage, abdominal pain, cramps, nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting) due to the hot water sitting in a 'hot water tank' (or boat-wise, a calorifier)

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We dont have any filters, drink straight from the tank 24/7 365. If we are using standard tap water with chlorine then the missus has a jug filter for her tea. The water is superb here straight from the bore hole so not contaminated with chlorine and tastes great.

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Once upon a time when I was a young lad I was walking with my dad in the Peak District (near 'Toads Mouth' rock Fox House to be exact) It was a hot day and I was thirsty "Dad, can I drink from the stream?" "Aahh  o' cewerse tha can owd lad" So I did drink, very refreshing, it was too. Only later when I ventured upstream did I see the dead sheep decomposing in the water. 

 

But I'm ok now ??

Edited by nb Innisfree
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1 hour ago, PaulD said:

There is also the possibility of antifreeze in the heating coils leaking into the calorifier. This is poisonous.

In theory yes but practically it would be the other way round, domestic water leaking into the engine coolant. Even when up to pressure (typically between 6 and 15 psi) the coolant pressure will be less than the typical water pump pressure thus the leak to the coolant. I know there are some about but it would take an idiot to ignore coolant spewing out of the engine filler.

 

On the topic of sediment in the calorifier. Most of any sediment will be scale from the lime in hard water areas, not brought in as particles in the water. The OP can't do anything about scale unless they only boat is soft water areas or fits a water softener.

Edited by Tony Brooks
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25 minutes ago, Loddon said:

Mmm 25 years living on board and never filtered any water, I am still alive 

We too, never sick.

 

Its not done a lot for your liking for the present government or your liking for the UK though, has it? Perhaps some foul water from an African watering hole would have been better.

Or the Ganges?

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I love my country I can trace family roots back to the 1600's in Nottinghamshire.

That's why I am so annoyed about a bunch of right wing nut jobs ruining it.

 

 

Right back to subject @J R ALSOP can you tell you water tank filling story ? 

Edited by Loddon
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4 hours ago, nb Innisfree said:

Once upon a time when I was a young lad I was walking with my dad in the Peak District (near 'Toads Mouth' rock Fox House to be exact) It was a hot day and I was thirsty "Dad, can I drink from the stream?" "Aahh  o' cewerse tha can owd lad" So I did drink, very refreshing, it was too. Only later when I ventured upstream did I see the dead sheep decomposing in the water. 

 

But I'm ok now ??

I think I had a very similar experience in Scotland many years ago.

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