HD-950A

I plumbed this filter housing in and put a filter in it. I used brass fittings and went directly to PEX. No leaks and it was very easy to install.Immediately, I saw some black specks caught in the filter. None were larger than 2mm but there were a few. By day three, there were a lot more specks and I thought I could see a little yellowing of the filter. I am in it less than 2 months and the color is almost as dark as the OSB board that is on the wall behind it.I know that the municipal workers try their best and they do an awesome job with the huge systems they maintain. But pipes get old and you cannot help but get some dirt in the lines here and there.I would definitely recommend that everyone get one of these and use it. It functions very well and your peace of mind knowing you are getting cleaner water has to account for something. It will also help your other filters, ice maker, tap water, etc. last much longer.

I’m using this Culligan Whole House Water Filter System for my ice machine, and it works great! The water is noticeably cleaner, and my ice comes out crystal clear without any odd taste. Installation was straightforward thanks to the built-in bypass valve and included tools, and I love that it helps protect both my ice maker and plumbing from sediment buildup. Culligan’s quality really shows, solid construction, easy maintenance, and peace of mind knowing my water is well filtered before it even reaches my appliances. Great price and fit perfectly, Highly recommend!

This filter is perfect for the average sized house and is priced very well. The instructions are very clear and installation was a breeze without any professional help needed. Do make sure you purge all the air and open your faucets and everything slowly to avoid water hammer.

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!

I purchased and installed this filter specifically for my fridge: Because my fridge has a very proprietary GE filter that is supposed to last 6 months at a time but keeps getting clogged with sediment after only 3 weeks of use (and I can't afford replacing filters at $55 a piece every 3 weeks), I installed this Culligan filter to help pre-filter the water before it gets to my fridge's more expensive filter. It did do the trick and didn't seem to drop the water pressure at all. Since it's only supplying water to my fridge, I expect the Culligan filter inserts to last much, much longer than the six months it's rated for when used for a whole house.This was a pain to install because of the way it was designed, but it was well worth it at the price.It would have been a bit easier to install if the manufacturer had used something smaller than 1-inch threaded openings for the inlet and outlet -- it took me a couple of hours at my local big orange DIY store to find the right combination of fittings that would go from my 3/4 or 1/2 inch copper pipes in my house to the inlet and then from the outlet to the right fittings to fit my fridge water/icemaker water supply hose. I did find the right parts in the end as can be seen in the photo(s).Another problem with the 1-inch threaded fitting is that because it's such a large fitting, the threads are comparably large and coarse, so it takes a lot of teflon tape and a large amount of force to make the fittings between components water-tight. After installation, I did have an extremely slow leak (a drop every half hour) at one of the threaded points; fortunately for me, a bit more elbow grease to further tighten up the fittings stopped the leak. I'll have to keep an eye on my connections over the next few days after installation to ensure a zero leak installation, and I recommend others do the same with these types of fittings. I was hesitant to use too much force to tighten the fittings because even though Culligan claims the threaded joints are enforced with metal, the connections are still plastic and can break if too much force is used.For those without the skills, I'd recommend hiring a plumber to install the filter.The clear filter cartridge housing was also really difficult to unscrew out-of-the-box and required using the included tool to open. (You can see the black plastic tool hanging next to my filter in the photos.) It's not stated in the installation instructions, but for putting the housing back on, it's recommended in the filter cartridge instructions to only hand tighten. I only hand tightened as advised in the cartridge's instructions, and there was no leak even after 24 hours of use/water running through the filter/housing. Jut make sure to follow the instructions about the O-ring and silicone grease.The installation instructions did mention using silicone grease on the included O-ring when installing the filter housing, so I purchased some from my local big orange home DIY store. Again, no leak at the O-ring for me. The silicone grease I used was for use on potable water connections, and it took only a tiny bit to completely cover the O-ring with my fingers.Replacement O-rings themselves are available here on Amazon, and I purchased some extras because one of the other reviewers warned that his/her O-ring had gotten damaged during installation. Prime shipping got the extra O-rings to me in just a day or two, but I ended up not using them for my installation and will save them next to the filter for future use.The filter's Filter-Off-Bypass valve does work, but it's a pain in the behind to turn by hand without a tool. The valve takes a bit of strength to turn even with the included tool. I suspect that the tool itself will break eventually because it seems to be a bit flimsy for what it was designed to do: for example, instead of being made out of a solid piece of plastic, it's a semi-hollow frame, and I was really afraid it would snap off at the thinnest point every time I used it to turn the filter's valve from setting to setting. I did check that one of my local big box stores do carry universal filter housing tools of a similar design, so I think I should at least be able to open up the filter housing to replace the filter if the original tool breaks in half -- not sure yet where I'll be able to find a similar tool to change the settings on the valve, however, as the valve handle is a very unique shape.I do think that this filter along with similar looking filters from some of the other big-brands are all made by some third company that these more well-known companies purchase from and slaps their brands on. E.g., GE and Dupont both make whole-house filters at around the same price point as this Culligan filter but with their own brands -- the big difference between the others and this Culligan is that this one has the Filter-Off-Bypass valve, although Culligan also has a version without the valve like the other brands. One big plus of all this is that the filter cartridges seem to all be of the same sizes, so I won't have to worry as much about finding replacement cartridges in the distant future (decades from now) if Culligan decides to stop selling these filters.Overall, I do recommend this filter. I ended up spending almost $50 in parts and supplies to make a proper all-copper-and-brass, soldered connection to my water supply line, but the filter and filter cartridge themselves together cost less than $100. At that price, it was well worth it to get cleaner water -- and to save me lots more in the cost of replacing more expensive filters for my fridge.