Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Great filter, NIGHTMARE installation. Perhaps I can save Amazon buyers a bit of time with what not to do if you buy one. First, our 'main' water line travels underground to an exterior wall, and continues into the house under the slab. There are no exposed pipes to mount this on, so we called a licensed plumber to create the piping loops necessary to use the filter. Piping was smooth, finally the filter was mounted. Then the problems began. Our O-ring came broken, OR, the plumber broke it during install. We don't know, all we know is he told us the O-ring was broken, and that led to a mad scramble calling Amazon about immediate O-ring replacement (which is not carried by PRIME - WHY NOT?) to be shipped out to us asap, as water poured all over our garage. The plumber told us to get the O-ring and call him to come back to finish installing the filter. Meanwhile he put it on "Bypass", but it continued to leak. Rather than call him again (for a few hundred more dollars), we decided we could figure it out how to work the filter part ourselves. Solution: My LOTS of damage and money saving suggestion: buy an O-ring with the order for backup, AND Silicone Grease to plaster the O-ring down BEFORE installation. If all goes well with the installation, you have a backup O-ring (although you will still need the grease to plaster down the existing O-ring). I wish I knew about this before the purchase because we spent way more than this in water damage and water cost from the flooding in the garage for 10 hours overnight. You don't actually need a spare O-ring if you have and use the silicone grease on the included one before trying to screw the filter into the housing. Just slather the silicone grease all over the O-ring, filling in the groove. Works like a charm to stop leaks once screwed in tight. The red air-release button on top. Plumber told us that we should hold that down while turning the knob, because even he had trouble turning the top. We did just this after sealing the o-ring down, and water poured out under and around the blue cap thereafter. We thought the unit came defective, but after hours of drenching spraying mess while experimenting, we found the problem. This included poking a long strip of plastic up through the filter housing, while using a waterproof flashlight and hanging upside down to see into the main unit housing piping to ascertain the problem while water dripped into my eyes. Not fun. The PROBLEM is, if you push the red button down WHILE turning the blue handle you can trap the bottom of the air release, and it will hold that air release open in the new position (Filter, Off, or Bypass). Solution: DO NOT hold the red button down while turning. DO NOT hold the red button down at all. Once the filter is screwed into place TIGHTLY (with your O-ring plastered down with silicone grease), turn water on and TAP the red button until water BEGINS to flow. More than that and you risk getting it stuck like we did. You do not want to get it stuck. Some other facts that are not clear in the directions: - the Filter housing needs to be tight, or it leaks. Must reapply the silicone grease every single time you take it off, or it leaks. - the blue turn valve is HARD to turn. This has been noted in other reviews, but you don't know HOW hard it is initially, so you think that maybe that red air valve is a turn release. It's not. It's just HARD to turn. After all our experimenting with trying to stop water from shooting 30' across our garage, we loosened it simply by turning it so many times. NOW it works perfectly, and turns much more easily. All that said, we are glad we bought it, just wish it wasn't the ordeal it didn't have to be. If Culligan simply noted these 2 things on the box or directions, we could have saved a LOT of misery. NOTE: the red button is NOT a release for the blue valve, do NOT hold it down! Manual only mentions that it's an air valve, not that holding it down can trap it in the water spraying open position. NOTE: you NEED to buy silicone grease for the O-ring with/before the purchase, or they begin to include some in the box (because normal people do not have silicone grease laying around their house). Without the grease, it's probably going to leak, or you have to screw that filter so tightly into the housing that you will have real trouble getting it off again to change the filter. Why not tell people what they need beforehand? If you note these 2 things, installation could go really smoothly. NOW it works great, but wow... what an unnecessary ordeal! Hope you find this helpful, wish someone told me all this before I tried to install it, because the solutions are so simple!! **editing to add a photo showing how the plumber laid out the piping in the garage, and to show what the filter looks like after a month in use. Seeing how dirty the filter is, I'm even more glad I bought this!