Review on Pentek FloPlus 10BB Activated Carbon Filter Cartridge by Shane Jess

We have city water and wanted to filter the whole house. We used two filters, a Pentek DGD-2501-20 pre-filter with a spun polypropylene filter cartridge (50 micron to 1 micron in a filter used as a pre-filter which extends the life of that filter) and this 0.5 micron filter . You may be wondering why this filter is more expensive than what you can get half price at the big store. Well, not all filters are created equal. Most carbon filters are 5 microns, which is 0.5 microns. Cheap filters can filter 5 microns in a fine stream, turn on the faucet and you lose microns, while this filter can filter 0.5 microns when the faucet is fully open and the maximum flow rate is reached. This is a long lasting, high flow filter and cheap filters will drastically reduce the flow rate and you will have to change them more often. Many filters claim to be good, but the difference is that this filter is NSF/ANSI 53 certified, meaning it's designed to remove protozoan cysts. There is currently no other filter on the market that can offer such a high level of filtration efficiency with minimal flow reduction. When buying, be sure to compare GPH. In general, the higher the filtration, the lower the GPH (gallons per hour). Cheap filters claim to have excellent filtration but they do so at a very low GPH. This filter has a filter flow rate of 10 microns, but it filters down to 0.5 microns (that and the NSF/ANSI 53 certification are the real difference). In a whole house filtration system, you need excellent filtration and a high GPH, and this filter has both. This is what you pay for when you spend extra money on this filter. After adding this filter, our water tastes great (it's actually tasteless and better than any bottled water) and odorless. Our soul is much more beautiful and we feel especially clean when we swim in such clear water. Itching and dryness of the scalp are a thing of the past. Our skin feels so healthy now after the chlorine has been removed from the bath water. I can't express enough how these filters will change your life. The investment will improve your life and the lifespan of your plumbing fixtures, plumbing fixtures, HVAC humidifiers, water heaters, rubber gaskets, and appliances. This saves you in the long run. =======Update 01/29/2014: We are still very happy with this filter. A pleasant surprise, the filter is great for garden watering. We love gardening and have an extensive collection of Japanese maples, conifers, rare perennials and some bonsai. Our garden responded so well to the filtered water from this filter and they stayed so healthy in the summer heat. After summer watering and normal domestic use it's time to replace our filter which has lasted us 10 months (installed 3/2013). We were able to extend it to 1 year because there was a very faint smell of chlorine just this week when we decided to change the filter. This filter is still a good investment! Update 2/1: We changed our filters today and were surprised at how much dirt the pre-filter caught and how clean the activated carbon filter stayed. We posted a photo so you can see how dirty our city water's once-white pre-filter was. I also posted a photo of our setup. Most were purchased from Revain through Prime, with the exception of the copper tubing and valves. Here's the list if you're interested: Pentek 150296 SW-3 Key for Big Blue #10 Enclosures 2 Culligan WBA HD950 Mounting Bracket 2 Pentek 150233, Big Blue, 1" in/out, #20 blue/black, HFPP, w/ PR (they didn't have a 3/4 in-out so we settled on 1" and used adapters - probably not recommended but the type I had to install for me didn't have time to upgrade to the 3rd /4" to wait back ) We think the initial investment was worth it because we now love our clean water. For the kitchen sink we took it a step further and have a Watts Premier 531130 Filter-Pure UF-3 3- Bought staged water filtration system that goes a little Because Big Blue Water is awesome, but for a kitchen sink, Watt takes it a step further and removes multiple sides of chemicals, metals, elements, viruses and bacteria.Because we put Big Blue upstream, ours hold up Watts system filter longer and does not have to t work so hard to filter water, they more or less polish it and give it a nice finish. Our filtration process. This may not be necessary and may be a bit excessive for most. but for us we have decided to go one step further for our drinking water. This was our alternative to the reverse osmosis system and we also looked at some very expensive commercial filtration systems. After extensive research and weighing everything, we made the decision to use all of the above because it was best for us and combo systems best suited our home, lifestyle and maintenance obligations and gave us the best bang for our buck. Update, we are now using Pentek DGD-2501-20, 20" x 4-1/2" polypropylene filter cartridge as the pre-filter. We believe it offers better flow rates than corrugated board. We didn't notice any change in the water quality, only the pressure improved. It is also resistant to bacteria and costs less than a pleated pre-filter.