Hello All,
I don't know anything at all about water filters. I have been drinking and cooking with water from the tap. More and more these days, people have been telling me that that water is not good enough to drink, i.e., it is not pure etc.
Can you please recommend the most economical and effective way for me to get safe drinking water? Is there a filter that can be placed on the kitchen counter and I just pour water from the tap into it? Are the filters expensive, etc.? Do I need a water filter or is water from the tap perfectly safe to drink and to cook with? Thank you for reading this email.
Depends on what you're trying to do.
If your water has sediment or rust in it then any ol' mechanical filter will do, especially the ones on pitchers or on faucets.
If you have an odor (sulfur) then you might have to upgrade to an activated carbon (charcoal) filter to remove most of it. Some homeowners with a sulfur smell in their water can also eliminate the problem by removing the anode rod from the water heater (it's usually made of magnesium) or getting an anode rod made of something other than magnesium. It's short-term thinking to remove the anode rod from a water heater, and few water heaters have this problem anymore.
If you have lots of minerals (calcium, "lime", iron) then you could try a water conditioner. These usually involve a resin canister (a zeolite) regenerated by salt (sodium chloride or potassium chloride). (The resin removes the minerals and then the reconditioning cycle swaps out the resin's new minerals with the salt.) In homeowner terms, it means a canister in your garage that gets a 40-pound bag of salt added every month. You may also need to add a chelating powder like "Iron-Out" to remove iron in places like Hawaii's red dirt.
A whole-house conditioner means no lime buildup in your sinks, showers, or toilets. You use less detergent in the laundry, dishwasher, and your hair/body. The salt does not add to the taste or one's blood pressure. (It's far too dilute to notice.) For those who are sure the sodium chloride is a problem, you can pay a few extra bucks for potassium chloride-- it works the same way in the resin bed and it's also tasteless.
Your rusty, stinky, mineral-laden, pesticide-contaminated water can also be purified by a reverse-osmosis (RO) filter. These are usually mounted under the kitchen sink. RO filters discharge (waste) a significant amount of water but they're more compact and, in the long term, cheaper than a whole-house conditioner.
We still haven't taken care of bacteria! Critters and some chemicals will still manage to get through all of the above filtration systems. UV filters are starting to show up in municipal "toilet to tap" utilities so they may be mainstream/affordable in the home. (As long as there's electrical power.) A distillation water supply essentially boils your water and condenses the steam. If you live in an area like this then you're either on Navy sea duty... or you should consider moving to a new home.
We have a well on our property. I soften all the water in the house, but that adds salt so I have to treat the drinking water to remove that salt (that involves a reverse osmosis-- RO--system).
If you're like most folks, the municipal water you pay for is fine.
Consider the numbers. Seawater is 35,000 PPM chlorides. Human saline is roughly 300 PPM chlorides (like sweat or some contact-lens solutions). 250 PPM is considered the taste threshold for sodium chloride in water. 250 PPM minerals in water is considered pretty hard stuff.
If you can't taste the difference then you might be able to do without the RO unit. Another taste issue with the water might be its pH, which is why some well-water-softening systems use sodium hydroxide (lye) to neutralize the acidic taste... and the acid-pitting of copper piping.
I don't think there's any remaining medical credibility concerning low levels of sodium chloride causing blood-pressure problems.
