Pond Fresh Filters – Calclulating Flow Rate

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There’s no question that the Pond Fresh Dechlorinating filter is a handy tool to have around when you’re topping off your pond or filling it up at the start of the season. If you use a municipal water supply, it’s virtually certain that you’ll find some concentration of chlorine or chloramines in the water, and neither is a good thing for fish.

Using the PF filter is a quick and easy way to insure that you’re water is clean going in the pond, and since these filters hook up to a garden hose, you can use them anywhere outside, including on the garden plants and flowers.

A question did come up however, in terms of how long they’ll last, and how to kind of tracking their usage.

We need to make mention of the fact that both filters have maximum suggested flow rates.  The PF100’s suggest max flow rate is 1.5 gallons per minute.  The PF200’s is 2.5 gallons per minute.  For full filtering to take place and maximum life you’ll want to stay under these rates.

The simplest way to figure out the flow rate of your garden faucet is to use a 1 or 5 gallon bucket.  A flow rate of 1.5 gal per minute will fill a 1 gallon pail in about 40 seconds.  A 5 gallon pail will take about 3 minutes and 20 seconds.  Anything at this rate or a bit slower is acceptable.  A flow rate of 2.5 gal per minute would fill a 1 gallon container up in about 24 seconds, and a 5 gallon container in 2 minutes.

With this information, you can alsocalculate the the operational life of the filters.  The manufacturer suggests replacement seasonally but you can test for this with some common chlorine strips and I personally don’t think it’s a bad idea to keep an eye on this as you near the end of the filter’s operational life.  Both filters are rated to work on 20,000 and 40,000 gallons respectively and if you’re able to keep track of the running time (and your flow rates) on an ongoing basis you can probably get pretty close to knowing when the time is about up.   All and all,  it’s a simple, no cost process for at least having an idea of the working life of the filter. 

Another option (and I currently don’t have any good resource for this – you can check ebay of course) is to look around for a flow rate meter that you can attach to your garden faucet. If you can find one that’s relatively cheap and effective, you’ll be able to monitor your water flow usage and gauge the filter’s life off of that as well.

Visit the following link for more information on the Pond Fresh Filters.

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