We have city water and wanted a whole house filtration option. We went with two filters, one pre-filter Pentek DGD-2501-20 Spun Polypropylene Filter Cartridge (goes from 50 micron to 1 micron in one filter, used as a pre-filter, which will improve the life of this filter), and this 0.5 micron filter. You may ask yourself, why is this filter more expensive than something you get for half the price at a big box store. Well not all filters are created equally. Most carbon filters are 5 micron, this is 0.5 micron. The cheap filters can filter 5 microns at a trickle, open the faucet, and you are loosing microns, where this filter can filter 0.5 microns with the faucet all the way open at your maximum flow rate. This is a long life, high flow filter and the cheap ones will drastically cut down your flow rate and you will need to change them more often. Many filters will make claims on how good they are but the difference is this filter is (NSF/ANSI) standard 53 certified which means it's rated to remove protozoan cysts. Right now there are no other filters in the market that can provide this high of filtration with minimal reduction in flow rate. Be sure to compare GPH when purchasing. Usually, the higher the filtration, the lower the GPH (gallons per hour). The cheap filters claim to have great filtration, but this is at a very low GPH. This filter has the flow rate of a 10 micron filter, but it filters down to 0.5 micron (that and the NSF/ANSI 53 certification is the real difference) In a whole house filtration system, you need great filtration and high GPH and this filter has them both. That's what you are paying for when you spend the extra money on this filter. Since adding this filter, our water is excellent in taste (it's actually tasteless and better than any bottled water) and has no odor. Our showers are much more enjoyable and we feel extra clean bathing with such pure water. Itchy skin and dry scalp are a thing of the past. Our skin feels so healthy now that chlorine is removed from our bathing water. I can't express enough, the difference these filters will make in your life. The investment will improve your life and the life of your plumbing, plumbing fixtures, HVAC humidifier, hot water tank, rubber gaskets, and appliances. It will save you in the long run. ======= Update 1/29/2014: We are still very pleased with this filter. One pleasant surprise, the filter is great for watering the garden. We love to garden and have an extensive collection of Japanese maples, conifers, rare perennials, and several bonsai. Our garden responded so well to filtered water from this filter and they remained so healthy through the summer heat. After a Summer of watering and normal household use, its now time to change our filter, which lasted us 10 months (installed 3/2013). We could have stretched it to 1 year, because only a very tiny chlorine odor started to be present this week when we decided to go ahead and change the filter. This filter still remains a great investment! Update 2/1: We changed our filters today and were surprised by how much dirt the pre-filter caught and how clean the charcoal filter remained. We posted a picture so you can see how dirty the once white pre-filter was from our city water. I also posted a picture of our set up. Most of it was bought on Amazon via Prime, with the exception of the copper pipe and the shut-off valves. Here is a list if you are interested: Pentek 150296 SW-3 Wrench for #10 Big Blue Housings 2Culligan WBA HD950 Mount Bracket 2Pentek 150233, Big Blue, 1" In/Out, #20 Blue/Black, HFPP, w/ PR (they were out of 3/4 in-out, so we went with 1" and used adapters- probably not recommended, but the guy I had to install for me was under time constraints to wait for 3/4" to come back into stock). We think the initial investment was worth it because we love our clean water now. For the kitchen sink, we went a step further and purchased aWatts Premier 531130 Filter-Pure UF-3 3-Stage Water Filtration System . This takes it a bit far, as the water from the big blue is fantastic, but for the kitchen sink the watts takes it a small step further and removes several pages of chemicals, metals, elements, viruses, and bacteria. Since we have the big blue up-stream our Watts system filters lasts longer and does not have to work as hard to filter the water, it more less polishes it and puts a nice finishing touch on our filtration process. This may not be necessary and it is a bit overkill for most; but for us, we decided to take it a step further for our drinking water. This was our alternative to a reverse osmosis system and we also considered some very expensive commercial filtration systems. After doing extensive research and considering everything, we made the decision to go with everything above, because it was best for us and the combined systems best fit our home, lifestyle, maintenance commitments, and gave us the best bang for our buck. Update, we now use the Pentek DGD-2501-20 Spun Polypropylene Filter Cartridge, 20" x 4-1/2" as a prefilter. We find it provides a better flow rate than the pleated. We have noticed no change in water quality, just better pressure. It is also bacteria resistant too and cost less than the pleated pre filter.
