Summary
Is your well or lake water brown? You know like a weak tea color? Tired of complaints and comments from your children and guests about the color of your water? If you fill a bathtub does the color just keep getting darker? So how does a Tannin Filter work to get rid of that color anyway? I’m going to explain it all to you starting right now!
How color in your water can be caused
Typically color in your water can be caused by a few things but if the color is brown or a rusty brown it can be either tannins or iron. How do you know which one? You could have the water sent to a lab for testing which is expensive, mail your water sample to us for testing, which is free but takes a while or you can do a couple of simple tests yourself. Get some white styro-foam cups, run some water and check to see if there is any color in the water immediately as the water flows from the faucet into the cup if there’s no color, it’s not tannins. If it turns brown when you let it sit, it’s not tannins, the color is being caused by iron. If there is color in the water immediately when it flows from the faucet it could be either tannins or iron and you need to move on to the second test.
How to test for tannis in your water
The next test, to determine if your water with color in it is tannins or iron is to add about ½ teaspoon of iron out stir it up and if after the water clears, all of the color is gone, it is iron and you need an iron filter. If the color remains you have tannins in your water.
How to get rid of tannis in your water
So you now know you have tannins, how do we get rid of it? If you use very little water you might consider a cartridge type filter like one of these Tannin Water Filters for your home, but be careful, that filter will only remove tannins from about 300 gallons of water and at only .5 gpm. So this will only work for a cabin or cottage where there is very little use or for a single faucet at the kitchen sink. For a whole house application you would need one of these Tannin Water Filters If you think that it looks exactly like a water softener to you, you’re correct! They look like and work exactly like a water softener.
Features of a tannin filter to know
1) Tannin filters have two tanks, one with a control valve at the top, which is
called the media tank. The other tank (that looks like a garbage can) with a lid that you open, holding the salt, is called the brine tank.
2) All of the water in the house runs through a bed of specialty purpose ion exchange resin. This resin fills most of the media tank. As water passes over the beads, the tannins stick to the beads and are removed from your water. Eventually, the resin gets covered with tannins and those tannins need to be removed from the media so they can continue to remove the tannins from your water.
3) The tannin filter regenerates every 3 days, or sooner if the capacity has been used up, which typically is programmed to happen at night, or anytime there is very little water usage in the home.
4) By the way a tannin filter uses about 12 lbs of salt per regeneration.
Alternative method to remove tannis from your water
Another way to remove tannins from your water is with Reverse Osmosis systems. I don’t recommend RO for tannin removal for the whole house, cabin or cottage but if all you want to do is remove tannins from your drinking water, you can use our HUM Water Saver 75 for tannin removal.