3M Aqua-Pure Whole House Standard Diameter Stainless Steel Filter Housing, Model SST1HA

This is a great item, beautiful quality and well worth the expense. Also the one I received was made in the good old USA, despite the made in China online description.We are on city water, which is very good quality from a good source but just has a little iron scale in it from the century plus old water mains. Our problem other than just a little iron scale and particulates is that we are in the lower elevation part of the city and the water pressure is about 120 psig!! Great for filling the washer, bath tub in very little time but not so good if there is a leak as happened to our last plastic filter housing that was rated for 125 psig. It was the second one to fail in 12 years. Each time it was the bypass valve assembly and this last time my wife urgently woke me up at 4:00 am to say there was a lot of water in our basement. Not the way I like to start Monday morning.Enough of the plastic filter housings with failing valve seals. This unit is perfect. It is rated for 300 psig and made of sanitary grade stainless steel. It has no moving parts. Simple is always better. You do not need a bypass to change the filter. But you will need one more piece of inexpensive hardware - an ingenious ball drain valve. I'm very handy so I installed the Aqua Pure SST1HA myself and also installed a lead free brass 3/4" Webstone 40613W NSF-61/G rated ball drain valve. I installed this valve downstream of the Aqua Pure filter housing.So now the only thing I have to do to change the filter is turn off the main water supply valve coming into the house and one simple turn of the Webstone valve isolates the rest of the house AND relieves the water pressure in the filter. Perfect! I use the Aqua pure 1 micron filter which is an extremely fine efficient filter and still gives 8 gallons per minute flow rate and has a recommended replacement interval of 6 months, depending on your water quality. Changing the filter is easy, unscrew the flange ring with the short rod wrench that is supplied, change the filter and tighten the flange ring. This is a much more robust and secure design than the plastic screw in housing which could be over tightened and leak.Even if our water pressure was not so high (and I could have installed a pressure reducing valve except I like the higher pressure) I think I would still buy this.Webstone valve: [...] Make sure you get the lead free NSF rated valve.P.S. If you are looking to further leak proof the house, I highly recommend Flood Check washing machine hoses. The department store hoses are garbage, we had a flood from a failed hose too.I hope this is helpful.

I bought this for a pre-filter prior to a new tankless hot water heater. 100% stainless steel construction so it will last in the Florida humidity and sun outside. Plastic just doesn't hold up to UV light in the long term. I'm using it also with the dual-function scale + filter cartridge.After a few months, I can see that it's getting the fine iron out of the water, so it's working.The problem is that the O-ring / gasket that came with the filter is not sealing well, resulting in a slow drip leak, even after cleaning the surfaces and gasket and lubricating with silicone grease.From a flow design standpoint, I hate to see 90-degree changes in flow direction. Even a slight radius to get you to 90 degrees is better than a hard corner, leading to more turbulent flow, and decreasing pressure/ flow. They could have easily cast the top of the filter with this design/shape, but no, they machined it out to get a nice tight right angle turn. Oh well.A small design gripe for me (due to outdoor installation--which to be fair 3M doesn't recommend) is the retaining ring, when fully seated, leaves a lip around the circumference of the top, thus allowing a small amount of water (and eventually dirt) to accumulate on the top. A better design would be for the ring to not exceed the threads on the top portion, thus allowing all water and debris to drain off.The other design flaw is the distance between the threaded openings where the fitting is inserted and the screw-on retaining ring: If the fittings are not tightened into an orientation where the flat face of the hexagon is perpendicular to the length (i.e., if any peak of the hexagon face points downward), the ring may not seat fully because it runs into the edge of the fitting. I didn't realize this until AFTER installing really expensive stainless steel-CPVC fittings ($5 each). See picture. So I may decide to grind off part of each fitting's face to allow the retaining ring to fully seat. Nevertheless, it shouldn't need to be fully seated to create a water tight seal because the o-ring does not depend on the bottom part's flange to seat against the upper part; only that the bottom slide up and over the o-ring. Despite this, the housing still seems to leak. So I'm left to think it's an inadequately sized o-ring. I'll have to update this review after grinding the fittings to see if it helps with the leak.I expect better from 3M, but this is as good as I could find.

I am only giving this one star because I don't know if it works:So my plumber showed up this morning to install the filter only to discover that the fittings to attach it to the water line do not come with it. When I called 3M I was told that because they don't know what size is needed they don't include them. Since the size is a standard size for here in the U.S. I think that's a pretty lame answer. I will now have to wait a few more days for my plumber to pick up the necessary parts from a plumbing supply house. Something that he told me will cost more than if 3M had included it with the filter.

I am very pleased with this stainless steel whole house water filter system. We have well water with a considerable amount of sediment & mineral content. We got this AquaPure SST1HA water filter system to replace our old plastic filter housing which was past its recommended lifespan. This new housing is straight forward to install, we chose to build a bypass for it exactly as shown in the owner's manual. Changing filters is very easy with the smoothly threaded head/body assembly, especially compared to our old system that required a flimsy plastic wrench. We use string-wound filters specifically designed for well water changed every 3 months and O-rings changed every 6-9 months. The fact that the AquaPure is all stainless steel - no plastic components - gives us tremendous peace of mind that we no longer have to worry about cracking or bursting brittle plastic!