Review on 💧 GE Smart Home Water Filter System: Premium Filtration, WiFi Enabled, Replace Filters Every 3 Months by Jared Peck

It looks like the space age and has more options than I could ever imagine having a whole house filter lol. IMO one whole house filter is NOT enough to make my water drinkable. Luckily I'm in an area where lead pipe has never been used. But that doesn't mean there aren't lead fittings, which leach a little into the water. Plus, study after study shows that fluoride might not be a good idea. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of chemicals that are not tested and no attempt is made to remove them. However, a whole house filter (any filter, regardless of brand) does almost none of that. It removes most (but not all) lead, some sand and sediment, and reduces chlorine odor. But that makes the water undrinkable by my standards. I'm not saying that because I'm a snob who only drinks iceberg water or something. I say this because my doctor did several comprehensive blood tests (chemical levels of the body) on me and found about a hundred things that shouldn't be there - diesel fuel, formaldehyde, lead, BPA, Teflon, etc. etc. d - Some of they lack. charts. He said a lot of that comes from drinking water - I always drink filtered water like Brita - but he said switch to reverse osmosis. When I did this after just 6 months all of these numbers dropped significantly and some, like Diesel, dropped to zero. I only drink reverse osmosis water. So why filter for the whole house? This is how you protect your appliances from limescale and deposits (especially dishwashers, water heaters, washing machines). It also helps ensure you don't get chlorine or lead in your bath and shower water. If you just need a whole house filter to accomplish this, you can find one for around $30-$40. Here GE offers a filter with (a) easy installation (many homeowners can do it themselves with minimal tools), (b) wireless monitoring and control of water flow, and (c) a second cut-off point that can be done remotely for vacations or emergencies. . You pay about $100 more for these features than you would for a standard filter (MSRP is $229, Revain currently charges $149). These features may not be for everyone. I think that's a potentially good deal. For example, a working toilet can easily cost you several hundred dollars on a single water bill before you realize it. So this device can pay for itself. However, the running costs are higher due to the own filters. And I make a couple of caveats. I was disappointed that there was no filter! He's not ready to get out of the box. Disappointment. I was MORE disappointed when I realized it required a proprietary filter (GE FTHPM, FTHTM, or FTHLM). I carefully read all of their literature before ordering, their website implied I could use a standard 4.5" filter but you CANNOT. It's between 2.5 and 4.5, it's its own size. And I was MORE disappointed when I realized the cost of these brand name filters - $15-$50 for a 3 month filter. Wow! Much more expensive to run than my previous whole house filter - I typically pay $20 a year for Culligan 4.5" premium whole house filters (5 microns are $10 each) . The GE equivalent filter is a medium quality (FTHTM, 5 micron) filter that costs $26 every 3 months or $104 per year. So the GE filter costs 5 times more than my previous filter for the same performance. Cost of ownership with basic GE filters is $60/year (30 microns) and/or $200/year for premium filters (0.5 microns). ). To be honest, the 5 micron Culligan filter slows my water flow a bit - I have to believe the 0.5 micron GE Premium filter reduces water pressure even more, so I'm skeptical. I hope there will be some generic aftermarket filters soon. And as a last resort, you could theoretically install a conventional and much cheaper 10" x 2.5" filter - it's not perfect, nor does it filter, some of the water will bypass it and bypass the filter. But nothing prevents you from using a whole house water filter with a smaller filter in the housing (or no filter at all). It has a built-in bypass valve that you can only access through the app. This is a very important feature that most people don't think about when installing filters. It's invisible inside the device so I don't know how it's made or how durable it is (I hope it's brass but I doubt it, the rest of the parts look like plastic). But there are many reasons you might need a bypass valve built into your filter, so you can get water if your unit breaks, filling a pool, using a garden hose to wash your car, etc. Speaking of garden hoses, I hope so. Your plumbing configuration allows you to install it after the garden hose. If you need filtered water for outdoor use (e.g. to fill your RV water tank, organic garden, etc.), buy a separate water filter for your garden hose, they are widely available. It is designed for installation in PEX or copper. This is also intended for 3/4 pipe, which is the most common diameter in residential applications. But if you have 1 inch, you need to add a 1 inch to 3/4 inch adapter. There is a lot of Youtube about all this. If you have galvanized pipe, the dictum is hire a plumber, but it's not that difficult. The plumber cuts the galvanized element, cuts it and then adds the galvanized material adapter to the PEX. However, MY preferred method is to trace the galvanized section to the next connection, remove the entire section of pipe, and replace that section with PEX. It saves you the hassle and mess of cutting galvanized metal, the hassle of threading pipe, and the cost of installation. And if you have older galvanized steel you'll still need to replace it, so why not replace piece by piece. You'll need the following: a PEX crimping tool (about $20 at Revain), some PEX ferrules ($5), 10-foot length of 3/4 PEX tubing ($6 at your local hardware store), and a 3/4 galvanized pipe . to PEX adapters ($6). I promise it's easier than it sounds and there are plenty of videos online to help. Also note that you will need to install check valves on both sides of this thing - these parts are NOT included and the instructions don't address this. If you're adding check valves (which you should be), the instructions are pretty much irrelevant. This is why you must have check valves AND a bypass valve. Last winter we were hit by an unexpected "arctic explosion" that caused our temperatures to drop to below freezing for several days and we had power outages. I figured I prepped my pipes so they wouldn't freeze and drained the whole house water filter housing (my previous whole house water filter, not this GE filter). However, a few ounces of water got in, it froze, expanded, and the hull ruptured. If I didn't have a check valve AND a bypass valve to bypass the broken part, it would be a huge mess, a huge repair problem, and I would be out of water until I fixed it. This filter is best mounted on wood or drywall. My basement is stone so I had to build a plywood frame for it. It can be adjusted in any direction, a very clever idea that I haven't seen in any other filter. Most of the time the flow is unidirectional (i.e. pipes flow left to right) and if your pipes aren't aligned that way you'll need to get another filter or find a way to bypass it. This GE filter can be rotated for top-to-bottom, left-to-right, or right-to-left flow. The filter housing is transparent (which is perfect so you can see what's going on inside) and it's super thick, super durable. So I have some additional frustrations with this device. The instructions are really minimal, just 2 pages front and back. I was really expecting a brochure or a proper manual with this one. My main questions related to the installation of the quick connector and the functions of the app. The spline connection was my biggest problem with the installation. The included Shark Bite adapter actually works as a plug-in connection. I've never seen anything like this before and the instructions were very brief. You have to use the GE app - it doesn't work with Smart Life etc due to special features. Also read the fine print when it comes to GE devices - some of them say 'Wifi-Ready' which means you need to buy the Wi-Fi module separately. Luckily, it has everything you need to connect to Wi-Fi. The GE app requires you to create an account on the GE website. It asks for a lot of personal information, including your phone number and address. I find it aggressive. Also, setting up the app took a long time, over an hour. It took a few tries to connect and it didn't give me any error messages, it just took me back to the beginning of the installation process. Installing this device from start to finish, including configuring the app, took at least a full day, if not a full day - and it came from a fairly skilled wizard who installed several of those things. The GE app is not very intuitive and doesn't contain much data. I was hoping you could keep an eye on your filter, maybe even the quality of your water. But no. Basically the app only allows you to set notifications and there are 3 options to control the device remotely - filter, bypass and turn off (i.e. turn off the water remotely). The only pleasant surprise in the app was the notification for frozen water pipes, apparently there is a temperature sensor. So yeah this is a mixed bag, I'll give it 3.5 stars. These features are really interesting, but my excitement is tempered by installation issues, no filter, ongoing operational costs due to high filter prices, and a lackluster app.