Quote:
Originally Posted by Bwanajim
Is there a company that sells & installs express water filters or are you just taking thorough brand canisters and putting it on your nova unit? Thanks
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The Big Blue filter housings that you can purchase On-line are not compatible with the old Nova filter manifold. If you want to keep your old system you need to purchase new filter housings from Nova.
Express Water is an On-line company that makes a three stage whole house water filter like Nova supplies. There are a couple of other On-line companies that also make the same basic system and they all basically work the same as Nova only you have a choice of the type of filters installed depending on the type of water you have. Here in the Villages we have good "city" vs well water so the basic sediment and carbon filters is all that's needed.
With Express Water you have to install it yourself or find a "handyman" type person to install it for you. Also, you can have a new filter set sent to your home and do the filter changes yourself each year. I know of one Villager who was installing these but I have to see if he's doing it any longer. The nice thing about Express water is it is a very sturdy system, they are very easy to deal with and have the best price and quality filter On-line. You can get pretty much any type of filter set you want. I have the 5 micron Sediment, Carbon, and Carbon Block set.
With Nova, they come to your home and install it and can also come and change the filters for your each year. If you have a problem, again they are local and can come right away. Nova is a little more expensive than the Express Water system but you are getting the convenience of a local company to come and do all the work for you. You can also buy all the components including the yearly filters directly from Nova and do the install and yearly changes yourself. Nova gives you a 10 micron Sediment, 5 micron Sediment and Carbon Block filter set. You can get a Sediment, and 2 Carbon filters if requested at an additional cost. They claim their filters are specially made for them and they probably are but I don't think they are any different from the Express Water or any other good quality filter. Nova has a long history with water treatment so I know their filter set works well. From my experience Nova is a reputable company and easy to work with but it's going to be a little more expensive than dealing with an On-line company. Now that they have upgraded their 3-stage whole house filter system with something similar to the quality of the Express Water system, if you are not able or not interested in DIY, then call Nova.
As far as Pegasus is concerned, my opinion based on what I know about their product is, for the whole house water filter system, they are incredibly over priced and no more effective than the 3-stage system from Nova or Express Water. In fact, the Nova and Express Water may be better since you can easily change all three filters whenever you want where with the Pegasus it's more involved. Contrary to what the sales people will tell you, there is no mystery or some "secret proprietary" system to filter water. The basic principal is the same depending on the type of water you have.
There are companies like Pegasus that combine water filtering with water softening and those systems are OK but I prefer for maintenance reasons to have two separate systems.
I'm glad I created this thread on TOTV since we now know basically what happened and what Nova did to correct the issue. There is still the open question on how to manage the pressure coming into your home since all these filter systems have filter housings with an 80 psi max running pressure. I agree, we need to contact and discuss the pressure issue with the Villages water department. Also, I know Nova is a small company with a 1 year warranty on these filter systems just like everyone else but clearly, some of the original systems were failing for whatever reason in a way that shouldn't happen. Whether it was the filter housing leaking at the manifold or the filter housing springing a small leak or the filter housing showing signs of stress cracking, or a complete failure of the filter housing, none of these events should happen on a large scale in a residential installation. Given this, and the fact that the basic plumbing is already there and all Nova has to do is remove the old filter system and install the new one which in my case replacing the Nova with the Express Water took less than an hour, they should give some discount to the effected systems when discovered.
If you have an older Nova filter system, just keep and eye on it, since it may never have a problem. If you can afford it and don't want to take any chances or have yet another concern to worry about, then call Nova for a replacement system or get an Express Water and change it out. I didn't want to take any chances so I changed my system out.
I attached my old Nova and new Express Water system so you can see they are basically similar systems.
Hope this all helps.