When you plan to upgrade the water treatment system at your home, you will be offered numerous choices. Picking the right water filter for your home is important. The filter you choose should be capable of handling the problems you face. Ideally, if your water hosts a range of pathogens and microbes, you need to invest on ultraviolet filtration systems. These systems are carefully designed to reduce the amount of pathogens and parasites in water. Ultraviolet filtration helps in places where the percentage of water borne diseases is high.
Buying an UV system is not a rocket science. Yet, you must be aware of certain points before making a move.
Quantity of water
First things first, you need to be aware of your daily water intake. How much water does your family need? Whether it is bathing, drinking or cooking – you need to be aware of the total amount of water used on a daily basis. This is important because you need to invest on filters that can kill all the contaminants in your daily water supply. Time after time, people worry if the water they intake is clean and pure. This question arises mainly because you have not judged on the right size for your water filtration systems.
Take home: It is crucial for you to estimate how much water is required by your home. And, choose an ultraviolet filtration system that meets and exceeds this requirement.
Flow rate
Every ultraviolet filtration system is evaluated using a parameter known as “Flow Rate”. This factor is measured in terms of Gallons Per Minute (GPM). The flow rate is useful in determining how much water can be handled by your filtration system. At all times, you need to consider an oversized filter. When compared to undersized ones, the bigger filters are always better. And, there are several obvious reasons to this.
Flow rate brings to light a very common question. How many areas in the home are going to be covered by the filter? For example, if you are planning to treat only a single bathroom in your home, you need at most 6 gallons per minute. And, when the number of bathrooms increases to three, you will require around 12 gallons per minute. This is a simple math that can be used to judge the flow rate of your ultraviolet filtering system.
Take Home: Flow Rate is determined by the application of your ultraviolet water filter. When you choose to use the filter in multiple places, the flow rate will increase. As a result, you need to increase the size of your filter too.
Ultraviolet dose
By definition, ultraviolet dose defines the amount of energy to be released by the light source. Every ultraviolet filter has a light source. The intensity of light released by this source defines how effective the filter is. When the intensity is fine-tuned and designed to cover a wider range, you will be able to remove more pathogens from water.
Ultraviolet dose is measured in millijoules per square centimeter. To begin with, the filter you choose must have a dose of at least 30 millijoules per square centimeter. You need to worry about how intense the filter is. All these details will be provided in the label. Also, go through the instruction manual for gathering more details about how strong the UV light from your filter is.
Quality of water
In order to keep the functionality and performance of your ultraviolet filter at a peak, you need to be aware of the actual quality of water in your region. What kind of contaminants are present in the water? Do you have high volumes of bacteria? Or, is your region famous for the virus hepatitis? It is essential to know the actual quality of water in your neighborhood. Likewise, tests to reveal the actual hardness and percentage of sediments in water are important. The presence of sediments and hardness will stop the ultraviolet filter from functioning properly.
For the ultraviolet filter to work perfectly, you need to focus on the following parameters:
• Hardness should be less than 7 grains per gallon
• Iron should be less than 0.3 parts per million
• Magnesium should be less than 0.03 parts per million
• Turbidity should be less than 1 NTU
• Ultraviolet Transmittance should be greater than 75 percentage
If the water entering into your ultraviolet filter doesn’t meet these requirements, you need to engage in pre-treatment routines. And, if there are multiple filtration systems in your home, consider installing the UV filter at the end.
Installation and storage
Moving on, two other important aspects about ultraviolet filters would be installation and storage. Let’s begin with the latter. Do you have adequate, pre-planned space in your home for the filter? Ultraviolet filters come in different shapes and sizes. Some filters are long and others are compact. To install an ultraviolet filter at your home, you need to have space equivalent to double the size of the filter. Also, you need to be careful with the alignment of the filter. Read through the installation manual to understand if the filter needs to be installed horizontally or vertically. And, if you need to buy a pre-filtration system, be aware of its space requirements too.
Additional features
Ultraviolet filters are based on an interesting technology. There is so much to these filters. Thus, you can always expect for better and more advanced functionalities.
For example, there are filters with count down meters. These meters will help you understand when the lamp in your ultraviolet filter has to be replaced. Likewise, there will be separate lights for every component in your filtration system. When any one of these components fail, you will receive a notification. Hence, you can start repairing or replacing the faulty component.
Thirdly, you have sensors to help you understand what processes are carried out in the filtering system. With the help of these sensors, you can monitor the overall functionality and performance of the ultraviolet filter easily.