water filters

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Some cottages use municipal water, but more cottages at west Greenwich use well water. The advantage of well water is that the water is free, which is a big advantage for running a vegetable garden, raising fishes, ducks, and doing household laundry. The disadvantage of well water is you need to monitor and maintain the water quality by yourself.

The water quality depends on multiple stages of water filters. The well is a deep hole near your cottage, the hole's bottom is lower than the underground water table surface so that it will have nearly unlimited access to the underground water table. The wall of the well is a thick layer of blocks of cement to prevent the soil from getting into the well. The water from the bottom of the well is filtered by the earth, which is a very good filter. In case the well water is polluted by microbes, we can use the bleach to shock the well. A well is like a spring, it is important to continuously use the water in order to keep it fresh. The well also has a certain capacity. It usually has a few feet of water at full capacity. Once water is drawn from the well, it has a few gallons per minute water regenerating rate -- a rate measures how fast water is refilled after depletion. That rate depends on the season and climate. During the spring, after snowmelt, the underground water table is high, the rate is maximum; during fall (September usually), the underground water level is low, the rate is minimum.

The well water is sucked into a 10 feet vertical pipe connecting to a buried horizontal pipe. The horizontal pipe eventually connects to a vertical pipe in the kitchen. The pipe's underwater part is terminated with a foot valve that prevents water backflow. In case the foot valve's operation is compromised by sediments/sands or corrosion, the vertical pipe needs to be disconnected and pulled out in order to clean or replace the foot valve.



A sub-pump pumps the water into the cottage. The most common pump is the venturi pump. The pump is only activated when the water pressure in your plumbing system is lower than a threshold. In case the well water is overdrawn, the air bubbles could get into the plumbing system. As a result, the water pressure won't be able to build up and the sub-pump won't stop running. In that case, we need to open the faucet to let the trapped air out, so that the water pressure can reach the cutoff threshold. 

The water is then filtered by a whole house filter. This filter removes the sediments and odor from the water.

After this filtering, the water is generally good for shower, laundry, and gardening. For drinking water, you need stages of filters. There is a wide range of drinking water filters on the market, I have a 6 stage water filter combined with a Faucet water filter. The filter replacement can be bought online.

Eventually, the water quality is decided by testing. I use the following water tester to decide if the water is drinkable or not.

I also buy 5-gallon drinking water bottles. The Walmart supercenter exchange empty water bottles with filled ones. With a pump mounted on the 5-gallon water bottle, we got a drinking water station.