Our water filters

A little over 10 years ago, we read reports about water quality, and it prompted us to install an elaborate water filter system to “purify” the city water feeding our entire house. We have four 3 feet long and 6.5″ diameter gigantic filters in our garage filtering the water coming from the street into our house, 4 more small filters for our kitchen sink, and again 4 filters for our freezer (for ice cubes and cold drinking water). Therefore, throughout the house, our water is filtered from the big garage filters, and any drinkable water has been filtered once more through a set of 4 more smaller filters. We usually need to replace the filters once a year, sometimes they don’t quite last a whole year (a good indicator is the water pressure in the house, it drops when the filters are getting “clogged”). I took these pictures in January of 2009, when a technician came to replace them. This isn’t an ad stunt for the company we are using, they don’t even know I’m posting these. In Pensacola, city’s drinking water is a very sensitive subject, and has generated some heated controversy. Twice, we’ve had reports claiming our water is the worst in the US of A! The last one was very recent…
I don’t believe everything I read- I know there is always 2 sides to a story and I know there are ways to present things and influence the reader’s perception. However, there has been enough concern to raise my curiosity. I plan on conducting a little investigation of my own… I would like to do some testing too (I’ll do a little research on which lab to use), see what the filters are capturing and making sure they are providing us with “good” water.
For all I know, we may be filtering some of the good stuff out of our water. It would be interesting to get some facts.
I’m sharing these pictures, no tricks here. On the first image you can see on the left hand, a nice clean white, new, unused filter. On the right hand are 2 filters that had been filtering our water for a period of 9 months. Again, in our garage we have 4 tanks, in these tanks are the filters you see (each tank houses a filter). Water goes consecutively through each to finally feed our house. All 4 filters needed to be changed, and all were very muddy. I have no clue about the chemical composition of that brown stuff covering our filters. I do recall a conversation with one of the workers changing the filters once raising concerns about the radioactivity of the spent filters.
In conclusion, strictly from these images, I’m glad the filters are saving my kidneys from the job of filtering the goo, and that my long hot steamy showers aren’t covering my lungs with it.