There were a few problems here that I wanted to solve. We've become addicted to carbonating our own water - and eliminating the trips to the store and the wasted empty bottles from purchasing carbonated water. We bought a name brand carbonator - and really enjoy it except for two things. The cost of the CO2 refills, and the time it took to refill the carbonating bottle from the carbon filtered fridge water outlet (about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes each time). Our only water filter was in the refrigerator, an expensive model that cost about $50 to replace and needed replacement about every 6 months. The refrigerator had a coil of 5/16 plastic tubing to cool the water - and a 1/4" copper feed line running across the kitchen, about 20' of line. By the time the water reached the fridge and crossed the water filter, we had significant pressure drop and slow flow out of the fridge.
 |
| Whole House 10" Filter Upgrade - For Kitchen Sink Cold Water, and line to Refrigerator |
I looked at ways to upgrade the fridge system - increasing the size of the feed line, increasing the size of the lines in the fridge - and realized this would be just too big of a retrofit, and would take too long. So - I decided to install a 10" whole house water filter housing under our kitchen sink - and filter all the cold water going just to the kitchen sink and refrigerator. I would install the carbon block filter there under the sink, and remove and bypass the carbon block filter in the refrigerator.
 |
| Ready to drill the hole in the countertop to run the CO2 line to the carbonator. |
I've solved the cost of the replacement CO2 cartridges by purchasing a 20lb CO2 bottle and an adapter hose compatible with my carbonator. Works great, now I'm refilling the 20lb tank about every 6 months, instead of small CO2 bottles every 2 or 3 weeks. I wanted to hide the CO2 tank under the sink - so I needed to drill a hole in the Quartz countertop. I purchased a diamond tipped hole saw for this purpose - drilling the hole was real easy and took only about 15 minutes.
 |
| The only tool I had to purchase - a small diamond tipped hole saw. Decided to get a good one. |
 |
| Drilling the hole in the countertop - the red colour is from the paint coming off the hole saw. |
 |
| After photo - paint removed from the hole saw |
 |
| Nice clean hole in the quartz countertop |
Now - onto the water filter installation. I purchased a Dupont branded 10" whole house water filter housing online. I purchased threaded brass PEX tubing adapters to screw into the head of the water filter to be able to make the cold water connections. I installed 4 small ball valves to be able to completely bypass the water filter in case of a problem, or while changing filters. Redoing the PEX water piping was the longest part of the job, took me a Saturday morning to do, combined with re-routing my sink drains (that's another story).
 |
| Plumbing the new water filter under the kitchen sink. I've removed the double sink drain pipes to give myself some room |
Cold water runs through the single 10" filter - I have nice clean municipal water feeding the house so all I needed is a single carbon block filter. If you're water isn't clean - well water or otherwise - you may need a second particle filter upstream of the carbon filter. The only consumers downstream of my water filter are my kitchen sink, and the refrigerator. So now - to refill water bottles for carbonation, I can refill from the kitchen sink to have carbon filtered water without any Chlorine taste, and it only takes about 10 seconds to refill a bottle. The carbonator is right behind the sink - so very quick and efficient.
 |
| The completed water filter installation - complete with a full bypass line in case I need to take the filter out of the circuit |
 |
| 20lb CO2 tank underneath the sink located next to the water filter. |
Bypassing the water filter in the refrigerator was very easy. For my refrigerator, all I needed to do was to remove the water filter - there is an automatic bypass valve inside the refrigerator that bypasses the water flow when the filter is removed. Now - filling a glass of water from the refrigerator is about twice as fast with the water filter removed - since the pressure drop across the filter is gone.
All in all - very happy with this upgrade. Great tasting water without waiting around for water to get out of the refrigerator outlet. Let me know if you have any questions.
Sources and Links
I hope you found this post useful. Feel free to ask questions in the comments section below. I answer all questions.
No comments:
Post a Comment