If you're looking into whole-home filtration, you've probably been reading about chlorine, hard water, or the chemical smell in your shower. Sediment most likely isn't on your list, and people rarely ask us about it, because in general the water coming out of the tap looks perfectly clean and clear.

This article explains how sediment gets into your water supply and 6 benefits of removing it with a water filter.
 

Sediment is the dirt, sand and rust your water picks up on the way to your house from the treatment plant. Water leaves the plant (mostly) clean, then travels kilometres through buried pipe to reach you, and in most suburbs that pipe was laid decades ago and nobody has seen the inside of it since.

It builds up as a coating on the inside wall of the pipe, right through the network rather than only in the low sections. Changes in water pressure can dislodge this sediment, which ends up coming into your home. Another common source is when dirt comes into the waterlines from nearby construction works. Sometimes there is enough of it to see in the glass, and the rest of the time it arrives a little at a time without anyone noticing.

Microplastics travel the same route, some of them carried from the source water and some worn off plastic pipe and fittings along the way.
 

Sediment is the easiest thing in your water to deal with, because a particle is a physical object and a filter is a physical barrier that catches it, using nothing but the water pressure you already have. Every Aquastream whole-home system starts with a sediment cartridge where the water comes into your house, so the grit gets held back before the rest of the system has to deal with it. The standard cartridge is rated to 5 microns, finer than anything your eye can pick up.
 

• Discoloured water never reaches your taps. When a main gets repaired up the street or a hydrant opens, the discolouration stops at your filter instead of arriving in your kettle and your washing machine.
• Fewer microplastics. You won't see or taste microplastics in a glass of water, which is the whole problem with them, and a 5 micron cartridge holds back the larger plastic particles before they reach a tap.
• Taps don't wear out from the inside. Fine grit is abrasive, and it works its way into the ceramic parts inside a tap that control the flow. It scores the sealing faces and jams the moving parts, and that's how a tap ends up dripping, stiff to turn, or unable to shut off properly.
• Your hot water system keeps its capacity. Sediment settles on the floor of the tank and stays there, taking up volume you paid for. In an electric system it builds into a layer between the element and the water, so the element works harder to heat less. It also wears out the metal rod inside the tank that's there to corrode so the tank doesn't. When something stirs that layer up, you get it back as discoloured hot water.
• Appliances last longer. Dishwashers, washing machines, ice makers and coffee machines all draw water through small screens and small electric inlet valves, and grit is very good at finding them. They're the failures that get blamed on the appliance.
• Shower heads and tap aerators stop blocking. Both have fine screens in them, and grit collects on the back of those screens until the spray goes patchy or the flow drops off on one tap while the rest of the house is fine.
   

Will a sediment filter stop rust stains in my toilet? Sometimes not. Rust already floating in the water gets caught, but dissolved iron passes straight through a sediment cartridge and only turns into rust once it hits the air, which is why the bowl goes orange again a fortnight after you scrub it. That needs treatment of its own.

Does a sediment filter reduce my water pressure? A new cartridge makes very little difference to your flow. The drop off comes as it fills with grit, and that's the signal to change it rather than a fault.

Is a 1 micron filter better than a 5 micron filter? There's a tradeoff. A 1 micron cartridge holds back finer particles than a 5 micron one, and it also blocks up faster, so your flow drops sooner and you replace it more often.

Finer does catch more, and that difference is real. Most microplastics measured in drinking water are smaller than 20 microns, so dropping from 5 to 1 holds back a share that would otherwise go through. The two cost about the same to buy though, so “five times finer” sold as a premium upgrade is a different point on the same tradeoff, not a better product.

We run 5 microns as standard because a 1 micron cartridge can load up in a couple of months if you have high sediments. If you want finer filtration, we recommend underbench filtration specifically for your drinking water, although we can easily swap the 5 micron filter in your whole-home system for a 1 micron filter if you prefer.

Does rainwater need more filtering than mains water? Rainwater needs different stages, because a tank collects whatever lands on the roof: dust, leaf matter, rust off an older steel roof, and droppings from birds and bats. Mains water arrives disinfected and rainwater doesn't, so our rainwater systems run ultraviolet light after the filters, and that light only works once the sediment is out of the way.
 

Sediment filtration is usually the first stage in a whole-home filtration system. Whole-home filtration systems usually have 3 stages for comprehensive water treatment, ensuring you can enjoy beautiful water with complete confidence.