Coffee, Anyone?

A few years ago when I arrived at QQ's house for a 2-week holiday, I was surprised to see a huge, ugly-looking 'equipment' which seemed quite out-of-place in his tiny kitchen. Apparently, it is a heavy-duty water filter which is crucial for filtering KL's questionable 'clean' tap water.

Water Boss

Uncle said that it was necessary to get the water filter because the usual smaller unit is not capable of filtering the amount of dirt found in the piped in water from Selangor's reservoir.

I was quite skeptical of uncle's claim until I saw with my own eyes how much dirt was trapped by the filter system when uncle cleaned his water filter that very weekend.

This time, I managed to snap some pics of the water that flowed out of the filter when uncle went on his weekly routine of back-washing and rinsing the filter.

Dirt water at the start of the first back-wash

Middle of the flow

End of the flow

Like the washing machine, it has a rinse cycle too!

More dirty water at the start of the rinsing cycle

Middle of the rinsing flow

Clear water at the end of the rinsing flow

You would think that the filter is clean at the end of the rinse cycle since the water already runs clear, right?

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Wrong!!!

More dirty water!

July 10: Uncle's kitchen sink

Repeat the back-wash and rinse cycle for another two times before the core filter is 'adequately' cleaned. 'Adequately' because uncle had tried the fourth cycle and still light brown water flowed out from the filter. He thinks that the filter is quite clean after the third cycle because cleaning the filter wastes copious amount of water and time.

Oh, did I mention that you'd have to clean the filter on a weekly basis?

Here's a video of the process.