Stainless vs. Plastic
A really good product that we’re happy to almost nevcr sell.
We get price and information requests for a product we hardly ever sell, the 4-cartridge Stainless Steel Filter with 2″ service ports from our website. There are currently several problems with this unit which include intermittent availablity, long waits for repair parts, and high initial price. We’ve taken the price off of the website because it goes up so frequently. We now ask potential customers to call for availability and pricing
Our experience is that people interested in this unit are most frequently those who are intent on avoiding plastic. We always point out that although the housing is stainless steel, it requires radial flow cartridges which normally contain plastics, both on the end caps and the binding materials that hold the carbon in place. We just want to be sure people don’t buy a very expensive case just to avoid plastic when the case will only work with plastic cartridges.
We have plastic options that cost less. For high flow sediment applications with for a 2″ water line, our Big Bubba unit is a much better value. Big Bubba handles high flow rates for sediment filtration with several (proprietary) cartridges available. It also has one carbon cartridge, which we recommend only for light duty service. Big Bubba, of course, consists of a hard plastic filter vessel and the cartridges all contain plastics.
For almost every case, we feel that the lower cost 20″ Big Blue housings for 4.5″ cartridges are a better value. The more compact large housing units can be furnished for 3/4″, 1″, or 1.5″ pipe. They will easily handle 30 gpm or more as a sediment filter or up to the 7 gpm range as a carbon block filter. And what is even better, they can be installed in parallel to achieve any flow rate needed. We encourage parallel installations as the most practical solution for most residential and light commercial high flow applications. The case is hard plastic, not likely to leach plastic into the treated water.
In the age we live in, looking for a water filter without plastic is like looking for a window without glass. If no plastic is the objective, we aren’t sure what the answer is, but it isn’t our stainless steel whole house unit.
