What Home Water Filters Should You Install To Maximize Your Family's Safety?
While most people living in developed nations do not need home water filters, there are still many who prefer to use these devices for various reasons.
Two of these reasons are to get rid of sediment and the smell of chlorine in their drinking water. Yet another is to protect their family's drinking water from accidental or deliberate contamination with poisons.
Are you still deciding whether or not you need a home water filter? Those of you still on the fence may like to read this article, Rules to Choose the Best Home Water Filters, which gives detailed reasons on why people install home drinking water filters as well as some alternatives to drinking water filtration to improve the safety of drinking water.
If there are pregnant women, babies, and toddlers in your family, you may want to read Why Are Home Water Filters Important For Families With Babies And Toddlers?.
This article explains why such families need a greater degree of safety for their drinking water. At the very least, they should invest in a Brita water filter pitcher to purify the water drunk by pregnant mothers and young children.
Of course, installing drinking water purifiers is not all a bed of roses. There are some problems, as explained in this article, Buying Home Water Filters? Be Careful Of These 5 Problems. For some people, the five problems described are major showstoppers, and they may prefer to drink bottled drinking water or use Brita water filter jugs.
What home water filter should you buy?
Let's say that you have decided that you need to install home water filtration to ensure that your family's drinking water is safe and protected from danger. Now you need to look into what kind of home water filters is best for your needs. These three articles, Home Water Filters Reviewed - Shootout Between The Top Filters, Problems With Water Pollution? Use Home Water Filters To Decontaminate Your Family's Drinking Water and What Types Of Home Water Filters Are Available To You Today? describe the main types of home water filtration devices you will find on the market as well as their relative strengths and weaknesses.
Some of you are only interested in the best, especially when it involves your family's safety and protection. Frankly, that means installing reverse osmosis whole house water filters. Unfortunately, there are good reasons why reverse osmosis water purification has not taken off, as this article explains - Reverse Osmosis Home Water Filters Are The Best For Home Drinking Water Filtration, But ...
A few home water filtration strategies described
1. Maximum purification of drinking water with whole house water filters
Most people do not need this level of protection. That said, some people do get their water from sources which can become contaminated through no fault of their own. For example, residents of Pavilion, Wyoming (US) draw their drinking water directly from aquifers. Unfortunately for them, oil and gas drilling operations in their region have contaminated their water, causing cancer in some residents (EPA Confirms Drinking Water Contamination by Toxics Used in Hydraulic Fracturing and EPA: Chemicals Found in Wyo. Drinking Water Might Be From Franking).
For those of you in this situation, the best thing you can do is install a multi-stage whole house water filter. This type of home water filter will intercept your water supply when it enters your home, purify your water, then redistribute it to all the faucets in your house. The first stage of filtration should be the sediment filter to remove dirt and other particulates. The next stage should be a carbon water filter to remove organic chemicals. The final stage should be a reverse osmosis water filter to remove all the other chemicals that might contaminate your water supply.
2. Maximum purification of drinking water without whole house water filters
The problem with installing point-of-entry whole house water purification systems is the massive cost. A good system could cost you upwards of $10,000. What if you do not have that kind of spare cash lying around? Here is a cheaper alternative to whole house water filtration that offers nearly as much protection to your family's water supply.
First, you'll want to install a good quality under-sink or counter-top home water filter. This will be your main source of water for drinking and cooking. It should remove everything - sediment, chlorine, lead, as well as any organic and inorganic chemicals that you fear might contaminate your water supply. Cost? $300 to $500.
The next step is to install decent faucet-mounted water filters on all your other taps (especially the bathroom taps used for brushing your teeth). Make sure these are carbon filters rather than sediment filters so that they can also remove organic chemicals. Due to their smaller sizes, they will not be able to remove everything. But as long as you restrict their usage to brushing your teeth and gargling your mouth, your exposure to contaminants should be minimal. Cost? $30 to $100, depending on how much protection you buy.
3. Moderate drinking water filtration with under-sink or counter-top home water filters
Most families will use this strategy to purify their drinking water. It is, after all, the simplest. Just buy a good carbon-based drinking water purifier which comes with a resin ion exchange system to remove lead (and any other heavy metals you are afraid of) and you are done. Preferably, your water filter should come with a sediment pre-filter, especially if your water supply has a lot of sediment. This will greatly extend the lifespan of your main carbon filter.
4. Moderate drinking water filtration with refrigerator water filters
Some families have refrigerators which come with filtered water dispensers. The quality of filtration depends on the manufacturer of the water filter cartridge used in the dispenser. Certain refrigerator models have more than one type of filter cartridge available. For better water safety, buy a better water filter cartridge.
That said, sometimes you do not have a choice. What if there is only one type of water filter cartridge available and it only removes sediment and chlorine? In this case, you may need the help of a plumber to hook up a normal (and better quality) home water filter to the intake of your fridge water filter. In this case, you may want to replace the fridge water cartridge with a dummy.
5. Moderate drinking water filtration with Brita water filter jugs
The better quality PUR and Brita water filter pitchers can remove quite a large number of contaminants. At the time of writing, the top-of-the-line PUR water filter cartridges can remove 11 different contaminants, including cysts, lead and a number of organic and inorganic poisons. If you do not have much sediment in your tap water, that is good enough. But what if there is a lot of sediment in your water supply?
Your water filter jugs will get choked up very quickly. In such cases, you may want to install a cheap collagen faucet water filter to act as a sediment pre-filter. An alternative is to install a dedicated sediment water filter. If you can find them, those made from polyester fiber or cellulose fibers are both cheap and effective.
6. Minimal but cheap drinking water purification
Not everyone needs to add a high level of safety to their drinking water. Many people in city and suburban neighborhoods receive safe drinking water with almost zero risks of contamination. Such families main concerns could be sediment and the smell of chlorine in their drinking water. In such cases, any kind of cheap faucet water filter will do the trick. Just check the NSF's website to make sure their claims are certified. so know more you can see water filter pitcher reviews 2018
As you can see, there are many reasons to install home water filters, there are also situations when home water filtration is not worthwhile. For those who decided that they want or need purified drinking water to ensure their family's safety, six different strategies were described for purification of drinking water.
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