Finally Getting Great Tasting Drinking Water in 2023
Great tasting drinking water is something that’s easy to take for granted when you have it. But there are a lot of places in the world where the available water, even if perfectly safe, is anything but great tasting! Dease Lake is one of those places.
Most people in Dease Lake draw their water for everyday use from deep drilled wells. Some of it tastes okay, but many taste and smell quite nasty. All of the wells produce very hard water that is loaded with calcium. Calcium is great for bones and teeth, but too much of it can cause kidney stones.
Hard water isn’t very nice to bathe in, and a lot of the water in Dease Lake also has iron and manganese in it, which heavily stains light coloured laundry. A few wells also produce water with lead and arsenic levels that are slightly higher than the levels considered safe by Health Canada.
Our Well
The best information we have is that our drilled well is about 300 feet deep (90 meters). We’ve had the water tested thoroughly by an accredited lab, which is something everyone with a well should do on a regular basis. The testing came back showing that we have iron and manganese in our water, among other things, which is what makes our water tasted, smell, and look kind of nasty. It also stains everything.
Furthermore, there is a lot of calcium in the water, as expected. Our water was also flagged for lead and arsenic, although both are well below acceptable levels. (I prefer to have NO lead or arsenic in my water, thank you!)
Great tasting drinking water is important, of course. But the first priority must be the safety of the water for consumption.
Reverse Osmosis
There are many companies to choose from who offer various ways to filter your water, depending on your needs. The system most often recommended for removing toxic heavy metals such as lead and arsenic uses reverse osmosis. Basically, it forces the water under pressure through a membrane. This membrane would carry water without leaking unless the pressure is high enough to force it through. This is the same system used to desalinate water for boats.
If you recall your high-school science, osmosis is where molecules move from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration, “a process by which molecules of a solvent tend to pass through a semipermeable membrane from a less concentrated solution into a more concentrated one, thus equalizing the concentrations on each side of the membrane.”
The reverse osmosis process used to take heavy metals, salts, etc. out of water uses high pressure to force the molecules of the solvent (water in this case) through the membrane into a pressurized system, the water system in your potable water.
Problems with reverse osmosis
Reverse osmosis is very effective, producing almost 100% pure water. The problem with it is that it is both slow and relatively expensive.
In order to be able to provide enough water to supply all your household needs, a large storage tank is required. This allows the system to filter water while the system isn’t being used to ensure there is sufficient supply when required.
Because of this, many people choose a point-of-use system mounted under the counter in the kitchen, solely for safe, great tasting drinking water and cooking. This does not soften or clean the rest of the home’s water for washing clothes, showering, etc. So if you have water like ours, you would need a very large tank and a fairly expensive system for the whole house, or a separate system to provide water suitable for bathing and washing clothes.
Our final choice
After doing a lot of research over several months, we finally settled on a whole home filtration system offered by HomeWater. We looked at another system from HydroFlow Canada, but while a great looking system, it only deals with the problems associated with hard water scaling. We needed a system that dealt with hard water and heavy metals, as well as hard water scale. HomeWater offered a complete “whole home” system that does all three without the need for an expensive reverse osmosis system.
Their system uses an easily serviced pre-filter to remove grit and other fairly coarse material before it hits the fine main filter. They offer a subscription for replacement cartridges for the pre-filter, so you don’t suddenly find yourself with a plugged filter from waiting too long. They recommend replacing the cartridge every six months, and more often if it turns out to be necessary (if there’s a lot of silt in your well, for example, such as is found in some wells in the Yukon).
The pre-filter connects easily to the main filter using PEX line. This filter takes out almost 100% of heavy metals, which is what we were looking for. This takes the iron and manganese out of our water, making it smell, taste, and look better. But it also removes almost 100% of arsenic and lead (99.97%, according to the information), which means our water now has virtually none of those toxins in it.
This tank connects, again with PEX line, to the descaling tank that removes calcium and other elements that build up in kettles, irons, coffee-makers, water heaters, and kidneys… and also make your hair and skin feel nasty in the shower.
Installation
In most places you can get a dealer to come and install the system. It can be installed in minutes in most homes if there is already adequate room. We already had a filter system in our house (it was installed before we bought the house and it was not the proper system), so we already had the dedicated space. If you are familiar with PEX plumbing and have the right tools, it’s very simple to install.
Dease Lake is a very small and remote community, so this was something we had to install ourselves. In my case, I have plenty of plumbing experience after years in industry, so it was a very simple installation. PEX takes considerably less time to install that copper, even, so it is a nice, clean, simple installation.
When the system is first turned on, it takes a while for the water to run clear. That is because the medium that is used in the tanks is dry and moves around from shipping and handling, but it clears up very quickly. I ran the water for about half an hour for the initial flush, and after that the water was clear and sweet. It produces great tasting drinking water that smells and looks good, too. It’s lovely to have crystal clear water!
One problem
There was a small problem. The pre-filter leaked a little. It was a small drip that took 24-48 hours to fill a 3 gallon bucket. Either the manufacturer accidentally used an undersized o-ring or there was a flaw in the clear housing. A call to HomeWater quickly resolved the issue with them immediately shipping out a full new pre-filter housing complete. That’s what I call great service!
The dripping, itself, was just a small nuisance that temporarily needed a bucket to catch the drips. But our goal of having great tasting drinking water on tap in our house has been achieved very well!
Quality
The system does what it is advertised to do. It produces great tasting drinking water with plenty of pressure. But it filters all the water for the whole home. That includes bathing and showering, laundry, toilet, etc. The water pressure is good, too. We haven’t noticed any drop in pressure. I do expect to notice a drop as the pre-filter reaches its service interval, if there is enough grit in our well. Time will tell.
Another feature we are very pleased about is the attractive neoprene sleeve on they put on their tanks to keep them from sweating from moisture in the air condensing on them. In fact, they look almost like a pair of extra tall dive tanks!
We are so far very pleased with our filter system and look forward to years of safe, great tasting drinking water.
