Reverse Osmosis water filter

[Momcpa]

We have very hard water living in a rural area. We have a water softener and iron filter to condition our water. We are happy with how it all works. BUT I drink a lot of water. Yep, a LOT. I don't like the salty taste to our water so for the last few years, I buy refillable water gallons from any of a couple local stores. It's cheap, but a hassle to remember to take the empties, re-fill them, and lug them home. Not a big hassle, but we've been thinking about how to get around that process.

I've been looking at having a reverse osmosis system put into one of the sinks, mostly just for my drinking water. We don't need it for laundry, showering, etc. A person is supposed to be here tomorrow/Monday morning to talk to us about it. We can decide then if it seems to be worth it or not. The other option is to start having Culligan or some other company deliver bottled water. But then we pay for the water, the cooler, the delivery.

Any thoughts on RO? I have borderline high blood pressure, so that's part of my reason for not drinking our sodium treated water. And I attribute the quantity of water I drink to keeping my weight, weight loss in check. Thanks for any suggestions, thoughts.

 

[pjigar]

We have under sink RO system and we love it. There are several DIY kits available for this if you are up for it. Try to pick a system where you can buy filter-only replacement for cheap. Some system has replaceable filters and others have replaceable entire cartridge (which are more expansive compared to filter-only replacements). We have a 4 stage (sediment, pre-carbon, RO, post-carbon) system. You can have more or less stages based on your need. One of the stage which can be good if you are not getting minerals from other food is "mineral stage". It adds back good minerals after RO stage although it adds one more "stage" cost.

 

[REWahoo]

DD#2's family lives a few miles away from us and we both have wells with very hard water. We do what you do, purchase drinking water using refillable three gallon jugs while DD has an RO system. Their system is a basic one and the constant noise from the trickle of waste water entering the drain under the kitchen sink bugs me.

I've considered having a RO system installed but I have two other issues:

1. A basic RO system with filters does not kill any potential bacteria in the water. The system would need some sort of sanitizing mechanism, ad an added cost.

2. RO systems waste water. A basic RO system will use four gallons of water to produce one gallon of drinking water, sending three gallons down the drain. While there have been improvements in RO technology in recent years I have concerns about the cost-effectiveness and reliability of these water saving systems.

Maybe I'll get educated by info on this thread and change my opinion...

 

[CRLLS]

We have had an RO system since we bought our current house 14 years ago. It uses more water than it delivers. It is just part of the process. Since we are an a well, I don't really care. We have it plumbed only to the refrigerator. It supplies the ice maker and the door's water dispenser, nothing more. The RO system removes ~90-95% of the salt and other dissolved solids, among other things. I would recommend to getting a handheld TDS meter. You can monitor when the RO membrane needs to be changed.

A 5-stage RO system seems to be <200 ( some under 150) on eBay. Installation is fairly easy if you can do such things. I recently installed one in DS's new home.

 

[ransil]

A proper functioning soft water system should not put salt into your water, salt is used as a flushing agent for the media.

A simple undersink RO system for drinking water should cost $200+/- look at lowes, home depot amazon ect..

 

[CRLLS]

A proper functioning soft water system should not put salt into your water, salt is used as a flushing agent for the media.

A simple undersink RO system for drinking water should cost $200+/- look at lowes, home depot amazon ect..

Technically correct. The sodium from the salt does exchange with the calcium and magnesium in hard water making it "soft". The RO system removes that sodium and some other unwanted minerals from the softened water. People often interchange the words "salt" and "sodium".

 

[samclem]

A proper functioning soft water system should not put salt into your water, salt is used as a flushing agent for the media.

This is not accurate. The sodium ions used to flush the resin remain attached to the resin and do enter the drinking water as the resin attracts the "hardness" ions (chiefly calcium and magnesium). This can be avoided by using potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride, but that is more expensive. But both sodium chloride and potassium chloride are salts, and either will enter the drinking water as part of the normal functioning of a water softener. The harder the water, the more sodium (or potassium) will be added.

To the OP: We have a water softener and use an RO system to remove the salt from the drinking water. I have the RO in the basement and the water it produces goes to a tap at the sink and to the icemaker in the freezer. It works fine, and you could do something like this. An RO system will reject most of the salt, but you'll want to pick a membrane that has a very high sodium rejection rate. Some of the stock membranes achieve high outputs (GPH) by letting 10% or more of the sodium through, which may be far too much for someone with high blood pressure.

Another (simpler/cheaper) approach that may work better: If your (well or municipal) water is otherwise okay (or can be made to taste okay with a simple carbon filter), it makes a lot more sense to drink water that has >not< been softened. Take a small line from your supply before it goes through the softener (most softeners have an easy place to tap for these lines), run it through a sediment and carbon filter if necessary, then directly to your icemaker and a drinking water tap at the sink. "Hard" water is actually healthy (providing useful calcium and magnesium) and sometimes tastes just fine.

 

[sengsational]

Hiring "the man" will cost you much more than just buying and installing one yourself. And watch the filter replacement cost.... that's where they get you. I wouldn't get the ones at the home center stores because of that. You can get systems that use standard filters and it's much cheaper to operate.


If you fill up a few glasses of water per day, and 4x goes down the drain, who cares? Skip a #1 flush and you're more than even.


I've had mine for 5 years and it hasn't needed any changes. I test with a TDS meter, which only costs a few bucks.


Here's the one I bought. It's a "clean" Amazon link (no kickback): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I0ZGOZM

 

[Jerry1]

If all I was going to use it for was drinking water, not the water line to the refrigerator, I think I’d just get one of those Zero Water pitchers. It would be easier that what OP is currently doing, getting gallons filled and bringing them home. Not sure of the long run cost versus a system, but the up front cost and installation cost/work is going to be a lot better.

 

[Ian S]

If you are concerned about the sodium in your softened water, you could try using potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride in your softener. It's a bit more expensive and you have to set your softener to regenerate more often because of potassium chloride's lower efficiency at removing "hardness" but it's probably cheaper than installing an RO system.

 

[GrayHare]

Remember that minerals are an important part of health. If you remove most of them from your drinking water, you might need to supplement calcium, magnesium, and others.

 

[aja8888]

We had an industrial RO system at a plant I worked at. I remember tasting the cleaned water from it and it was terrible with the minerals removed.

I've never tasted RO water from a home system. Is the taste OK compared to "normal" drinking water with minerals still in the mix?

 

[sengsational]

Remember that minerals are an important part of health. If you remove most of them from your drinking water, you might need to supplement calcium, magnesium, and others.

I used to routinely make my own carbonated mineral water, starting with RO and building up the mineral profile that I wanted. But I got out of the habit. I have the salts because I build water profiles for beer brewing water.

I've been meaning to mix-up a batch of mineral salts and keep it in a squirt bottle so I can add-back minerals to my RO water. Maybe this thread will get me off my a** and I'll do it.

It took me quite a while to figure this water chemistry out, but if you're in the mood for a mental challenge, look-up "bru'n water spreadsheet" and you'll have a whole field to study that you never knew existed. To do it right, you have to balance your cations and anions.

Then you buy a few salts from the homebrew supply or grocery store [gypsum, epsom salt, table salt, baking soda, calcium chloride (pickle crisp)], and you can match the profile of any fancy bottled mineral water. There's a list of mineral content in various bottled waters here. Oh, you'll need a sensitive scale too, because you use fractions of a gram for 5 gallons. You probably need to make the powder for 20 gallons worth in order to do accurate measuring.


If you wonder about how to build a nice mineral water, you can look at this paper. I've pulled a table out, below.

We had an industrial RO system at a plant I worked at. I remember tasting the cleaned water from it and it was terrible with the minerals removed.

I've never tasted RO water from a home system. Is the taste OK compared to "normal" drinking water with minerals still in the mix?

I would bet that if you checked the industrial RO water, it had a high level of dissolved solids (in other words, impurities). I like the "taste" (or lack thereof) of my RO water. One thing I've noticed is that if I let a glass of standard tap water sit over night, the next day it tastes quite disagreeable, but RO water overnight tastes fine. Not sure why.

 

[pjigar]

We had an industrial RO system at a plant I worked at. I remember tasting the cleaned water from it and it was terrible with the minerals removed.

I've never tasted RO water from a home system. Is the taste OK compared to "normal" drinking water with minerals still in the mix?

It cuts both ways! The water from anything but RO tastes to us as terrible. Pick your poison. We would not trade anything for RO system. I grew up drinking water with lot of salts so I don't miss "normal" water at all.

 

[MOSAT]

We have had a RO system for about 25 years in the house. We use it for drinking and cooking. I'm not concerned about the lack of minerals in the water since I'm sure we get those from other food and beverage sources.

Our municipal water comes from reservoirs, and here in the South, the water tends to smell and taste like pond scum water during the Summer. It's drinkable if you can get past the taste and smell.

All the negatives discussed are true, It's more expensive, wastes water, and some people, like our friends raised in the area, prefer the unfiltered tap water for taste.

It does get rid of most of the Sodium Ions (depending on rejection rate of your membrane).

 

[Momcpa]

OP here........thanks for all of the pros and cons to consider. I printed off your thoughts and DH and I will discuss this evening. I will let you all know how the service man addresses your thoughts after he is here tomorrow. Of course, I understand that his job is to SELL us something. But we aren't 100% sure and will weigh his comments (and price estimate) before we decide. Thanks again.

 

[samclem]

OP here........thanks for all of the pros and cons to consider. I printed off your thoughts and DH and I will discuss this evening. I will let you all know how the service man addresses your thoughts after he is here tomorrow. Of course, I understand that his job is to SELL us something. But we aren't 100% sure and will weigh his comments (and price estimate) before we decide. Thanks again.

Good luck! BTW, a cheap way to determine if you'd like the taste of your present "from the well" or "from the city" water with just some filtration (no softening) is you just buy a Brita pitcher use that for a test. If you like the resulting taste of the drinking water, then you can get by with a sediment filter and an activated charcoal filter, which is less trouble and expense than an RO system.
If you do decide to go with an RO system, do yourself a favor and check them out online. A good unit with standard (i.e. inexpensive) is pre-filters runs about $150 and is not very hard to install. Some of these in-home water treatment sales people are amazing flim-flammers.



Again, let us know how it goes.

 

[samclem]

OP here........thanks for all of the pros and cons to consider. I printed off your thoughts and DH and I will discuss this evening. I will let you all know how the service man addresses your thoughts after he is here tomorrow. Of course, I understand that his job is to SELL us something. But we aren't 100% sure and will weigh his comments (and price estimate) before we decide. Thanks again.

How did things go? Not still filling up jugs at the store I hope!?

 

[brucethebroker]

Hiring "the man" will cost you much more than just buying and installing one yourself.

Yep. Big commission waiting on that sale. (Not that I have anything against commissions.....30+ year commissioned sales person)

 

[Montecfo]

Good luck! BTW, a cheap way to determine if you'd like the taste of your present "from the well" or "from the city" water with just some filtration (no softening) is you just buy a Brita pitcher use that for a test. If you like the resulting taste of the drinking water, then you can get by with a sediment filter and an activated charcoal filter, which is less trouble and expense than an RO system.
If you do decide to go with an RO system, do yourself a favor and check them out online. A good unit with standard (i.e. inexpensive) is pre-filters runs about $150 and is not very hard to install. Some of these in-home water treatment sales people are amazing flim-flammers.



Again, let us know how it goes.

It's a good point. In Scottsdale we needed and loved the RO and the taste was heavenly.

Here in NOVA the simpler 2 stage filter from Costco is all we need. Even the kids and neighbor kids notice how great the water tastes.

 

[Momcpa]

OP here: We had the person come out for a discussion and estimate. It is a company that we have used in the past for water heater concerns/repairs and furnace situations. So we are confident in their work and any follow-up that is needed. While the business rep was here for the R.O. information, DH added a couple other questions about our furnace vents, etc.

We just received the estimate to address all the questions we presented to him. We had them list the cost for each project individually and also what it would be (with a loyalty discount!) to have them do everything. It was a little more than we anticipated, but not outrageous. We signed the estimate and returned it with the 50% they required.

DH has arthritis and it's not easy for him to 'contort' to work under a sink or in small places, so we understand that paying someone to do the work for us costs more than if we did it ourselves. Anyhow we are going ahead with it. As I'm the one that has a little harder time loosening the purse strings, this feels like it belongs in the Blow that Dough column to me. Pretty sure we will be happy to not be taking gallons to be refilled every week.....especially in the winter weather. So just waiting now to hear from their scheduling department to set a date for installation.

 

[John Galt III]

Last minute chime-in here! OP, congrats on your decision! Does anyone have a little charcoal screw-on filter that goes on the kitchen faucet. That's what I've been using for decades. Cheap as heck, and it supposedly filters out chlorine and other toxic stuff (various chlorine compounds). I'm sure it's not as good as RO, but wouldn't it be a lot better than tapwater, as far as drinking non-toxic water?

 

[Jerry1]

Last minute chime-in here! OP, congrats on your decision! Does anyone have a little charcoal screw-on filter that goes on the kitchen faucet. That's what I've been using for decades. Cheap as heck, and it supposedly filters out chlorine and other toxic stuff (various chlorine compounds). I'm sure it's not as good as RO, but wouldn't it be a lot better than tapwater, as far as drinking non-toxic water?

Read this (there is a link to a pdf):
NSF/ANSI 42, 53 and 401: Filtration Systems Standards | NSF International

What your describing is a NSF 42 filter. Basically just improves taste. NSF 53 deals with contaminates such as lead. When I buy my refrigerator filters I get the name brands which are 42/53 certified. I’ve never seen a filter with a NSF 401 certification (filters out pharmaceuticals) but will be looking for that in the future.

You can get an ultra cheap NSF 42 filter, but to answer your question, no, it’s not going to be much better than drinking non-filtered water. It will just taste better. It won’t be appreciably better for you.

 

[ncbill]

Just a reminder that municipal water is potable water.

You might not like the taste, but it isn't "bad for you."

Cheap charcoal filters serve well to improve the taste if needed.

If you have lead or arsenic (surprisingly common) in your well or surface water those of course need much more stringent treatment.

 

[Jerry1]

Just a reminder that municipal water is potable water.

You might not like the taste, but it isn't "bad for you."

Cheap charcoal filters serve well to improve the taste if needed.

If you have lead or arsenic (surprisingly common) in your well or surface water those of course need much more stringent treatment.

That’s what they told Flint Michigan residents. Just saying. From that catastrophe, we’ve learned that many municipal systems have lead problems. Not so much from the water leaving the plant, but the distribution pipes along the way.