Carbon water filter setup

[RedF]

I have this GAC (granular activated carbon) water filter that was given to me. I would like to use it to filter my chlorinated city water for brewing, just brewing. It is old, but I just took it out of the original packaging. I grabbed a couple of adapters from the local hardware store and hooked it up. After puking out a little bit of carbon dust (like the instructions said it would), the water runs crystal clear and has no distinguishable taste, smell or color.

Does it matter which way water flows through this filter? Will filtering "room temp" water hurt anything, as it claims "cold" water only.

 

[Chrisl77]

I would say that yes there is a direction you want to run the water and I think your running it backwards. I would want to put the feed water from the top so it pushes the water through the carbon compacting it. The way you have it your pushing the water from the bottom lifting the carbon as it flows through. Is there an arrow stamped somewhere that shows the direction of the flow? The cold water refrence just means not to run your hot water through it.

 

[RedF]

No, there is nothing marked on the filter as to which way is which, i did check before I posted.

I was kinda thinking along the same lines of pushing the carbon down. The way it's pictured would be more convenient for me, but I'll adjust.

Is this thing even a suitable filter for brewing? Like I said, it was given to me. Free is a great price!

 

[Chrisl77]

Should work fine. Just taking a guess at the size comparing it to your faucet it looks like it should atleast have as much carbon as a 10" filter that most on this forum use. At work we have something similar that we use with cation resin if you have a manual for it check you may be able to disassemble it and refill it with carbon when the carbon in it is spent.

 

[RedF]

Should work fine. Just taking a guess at the size comparing it to your faucet it looks like it should atleast have as much carbon as a 10" filter that most on this forum use. At work we have something similar that we use with cation resin if you have a manual for it check you may be able to disassemble it and refill it with carbon when the carbon in it is spent.

The manual doesn't mention refilling it, but I actually got three of them, and they're rated for 45000 liters each. That's a lot of brewing!

 

[Chrisl77]

Ya when your only filtering out chlorine the carbon lasts a pretty long time before it becomes spent. If that top cap doesn't pop off you could possible drill and tap a 1" hole in the top to empty it and refill it. Just turn it upside down and run water through the bottom to flush out the spent carbon. Then refill it and thread a plug in the hole.

 

[Buckeye_Hydro]

Keep your flow down around 0.25 gpm.

GAC is about as rudimentary a filter you can use for chlorine removal. They'v taken just a very little GAC and put it in an expensive sealed container...