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Water Filters

post #1 of 6
4/23/08 at 1:25pm
Thread Starter 
The tap water at my house is awful. It's safe to drink, but it tastes pretty bad and effects the taste of anything cooked in it. I'd like to get a water filter. Last year I got a Brita pitcher type as a gift, but it's made of plastic, and I don't care for that.

What brands of pitcher or faucet water filtering system would you recommend, and why?

shel
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post #2 of 6
4/23/08 at 5:09pm
Hey Shel,

Go with a reverse osmosis system. Takes out all sediment, chemicals, bacteria, viruses, heavy metals etc etc to a level of 99.99%. Its the only way to go.

Apart from the fact my business markets and maintains these units (so yeah I'm biased), they simply are the most thorough and efficient. Here, the tap water is chlorinated, fluoridated - you name it, its in there. The human body doesn't need chlorine - its been linked to heart problems over long term consumption. And we get way more than enough fluoride just through brushing our teeth and other means every day.

For people with rainwater tanks, we tend to use an Ultra Violet light to run the water through to kill off the nasties in the water, and some also like to then put it through the reverse osmosis filter (4 stage unit - sediment filter, carbon filter, reverse osmosis membrane, into the storage tank, then out through a taste and odour filter to your sink top faucet - this increases the pH to 7.5 from 7 to make it a tad sweeter to the tastebuds).

Plus it tastes so much better - food tastes better cooked in it too.

I can sell you one for a special price ;) hehe j/k

DC
 Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.
Robert A. Heinlein
 
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post #3 of 6
4/24/08 at 8:44am
Thread Starter 
Hi,

I didn't know that a reverse osmosis system could be purchased for a relatively reasonable price. It's well worth considering, and I've started to look into such systems. The results are certainly much better with such a system compared to the pitchers and more typical faucet systems. Thanks very much for the information.

scb
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post #4 of 6
4/25/08 at 12:25am
Welcome :) It'll also save your kidneys a lot of work. There's lots of them out there, many of them in the States, certainly many on line. Most have the component parts made in the same few factories in Taiwan - they just have them labelled differently for their own company. You'll find a wide variety of them, 4 5 or 6 stage units. Just make sure it has the basic filters as per my post and it'll do the job, and that you can get replacement filters easily with instructions for them. These need changing every 6 months or every 2000 litres that pass thru them (that's the carbon and sediment - the taste and odour every 12 months). Also look for one with a guarantee of about 3+ years, they are the only ones worth looking at (3 years is the standard factory warranty on the membrane, the most important (and expensive to replace) part of the system).

You can use the waste water to a certain extent on your garden, but it can burn some more delicate plants or garden lawns. That's if water's a scarce resource in your area.

You need fairly good water pressure in your house (40PSI or above), or you may need to buy a pump (look out for extra cost here) with some units to help force it thru the r/o membrane.

There - that's a bit more info to confuse the issue :)

Cheers - Daina
 Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.
Robert A. Heinlein
 
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post #5 of 6
4/26/08 at 1:15pm
I have a reverse osmosis water system installed on my basement sink. I use it to purify water that I use on plants. It doesn't really taste all that good to me to drink. The system takes a lot of work, including set up which requires removing the reverse osmosis filter, and running chlorine bleach throughout the system to sterilize it. Then you have to rinse it out and then put the filter (messy) back in, before you can even use it the first time.

But for my kitchen, I remodeled in 1992, I installed an Everpure water filtration system under the kitchen sink. It is attached to its own little faucet on the sink, and a small copper line attaches it to the icemaker in the freezer ice cube maker.

My system uses an H200 filter, which has been discontinued. The replacement is an H300 filter which I am about to buy. This system is also rated to remove 99.99% of everything including chlorine, fluorine, lead, and all kind of other things including pharmaceuticals that they're now finding in the water supply of many cities all over the USA.

I'd go with the Everpure water filtration system. It simply is as pure (or purer), it doesn't waste water (the reverse osmosis system is constantly running water into the drain in order to work), and it just tastes outstandingly better.

doc
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post #6 of 6
4/27/08 at 4:19pm
You can also purchase a countertop water distiller. Easier to maintain than a r.o. unit for small quantities of purified water. If smell is a problem you need to treat with some activated carbon. Water is simply passed slowly through a bed of carbon, quite effective at removing odors. Be sure to rinse the carbon before the first use. If you like you can add a bit of baking soda to the highly purified water.
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