Things To Consider Before Choosing A Water Filtration System
Whether your household water comes from a natural source, a cistern, a well, or from a public supplier, it surely contains a certain amount of contaminants.
Therefore, because you use water in most daily activities as well as for drinking and cooking, these contaminants can have a major impact on your life. Even so, most people are not thinking of the quality of their water and they later face the consequences of not filtering it.
Health Issues Related To Water Quality
Because more than 60% of the human body is water, people need to drink water to keep every part of their bodies functioning properly. In fact, an adult should have a regular daily intake of water as the following:
- About 3,7 liters of fluids a day for men
- About 2,7 liters of fluids a day for women
If the water consumed daily is untreated, it can transmit diseases such diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and polio. Contaminated drinking water is estimated to cause 485 000 diarrheal deaths each year.
Sounds worrying, doesn't it? Well, the truth is that the only one who can deal with the effects of contaminated water is you. This article aims to give you some tips to choose the best water filtration solution to remove harmful substances from the water you consume and use at home.
The Importance Of Using a Water Filtration System At Home
There are many ways you can treat water at home. Among the most common methods that people use are boiling, distilling, or solar purification - these are usually preferred by people because they are fast and involve no cost.
The biggest downside of filtering water on your own is that you never know for sure if you have managed to completely remove the contaminants from your water or even if you have removed the beneficial substances from it through the process.
However, home water filtration systems are the recommended solution to treat water impurities in a household. These devices have been tested over time to remove all contaminants from your water successfully, which DIY methods such as boiling, or distillation cannot do.
If you have never used a water filtration system before, the way to find the ideal product should be largely based on well-informed research.
What To Consider Before Choosing A Water Filtration System
Buying a suitable water filtration system for your needs is a long-term investment. This means that you cannot just pick the first model you see as soon as you enter the store.
After a quick-5-minute online research, you will be surprised by the variety of models on the current market. Technology has advanced so much that the water purification systems today came with an impressive number of features designed to enhance the user experience.
Therefore, to make sure you don't spend money on a product you don't need and that you won't be stuck with the same unfiltered water issue in your house, here are a few things you should consider before buying a water purification system:
The Capacity
You can't choose a water softener if you don't know exactly what kind of contaminants it should treat. Knowing the level of contaminants in your water and the consumption in your house, you will be able to determine the ideal capacity for a water filtration system.
First of all, you should take a sample of water and check it at a specialized laboratory. This is the only way you can find out exactly what contaminants are in your water and to determine what capacity is needed for the ideal filtration system.
As we mentioned in one of our previous article, there are water softeners of different capacities, ranging from 15,000 to upwards of 80,000 grains capacity. Most water softener dealers would recommend a 32,000-grain water softener unit or one cubic foot of resin in the majority of US houses.
But this is only the case of salt-based water softeners. There are several models that treat water in different ways.
Explore the Market and Discover the Available Models
If you are not at all familiar with home water filtration systems and you have no clue of how they work, it will be quite difficult to understand how the various models on the market work.
Should it operate based on the ion exchange process? Are electric impulses more efficient? Should you choose a water filtration system just to filter your drinking water or do you want it to be a whole house unit?
Given that no water purification system succeeds in removing absolutely all contaminants from the water, you will need to determine exactly what you expect from such a system.
This table made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes the technologies used by current water purification systems, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of using each one.
|
Treatment Device |
What It Does To Water |
Treatment Limitations |
|
Activated Carbon Filter |
|
Is efficient in removing metals such as lead and copper. Does not remove nitrates, bacteria, or dissolved minerals. |
|
Ion Exchange Unit |
|
If water has oxidized iron or iron bacteria, the ion-exchange resin will become coated or clogged and lose its softening ability. |
|
Reverse Osmosis Unit |
|
Does not remove all inorganic and organic contaminants. |
|
Distillation Unit |
|
Does not remove some volatile organic contaminants, certain pesticides, and volatile solvents. Bacteria may recolonize on the cooling coils during inactive periods. |
Installation
In some cases, you do not have to be an experienced plumber to install some of the home water filtration systems available on the market today.
Even if the installation is not a decisive criterion in buying a water filtration system, many people invest more money in a product thinking that they can take care of its installation without hiring a plumber. And we can't blame them, because installing a water softener with the help of a professional can cost up to 4,000$.
Therefore, installation time and difficulty differ from system to system. Some water softeners require quite a lot of space to be installed, others need cutting pipes to be attached to the main water supply line in your home, while some models can be installed in less than half an hour.
If you want to skip the costs involved in installing a water purification system by hiring a professional, you can choose one that can be easily installed just by following the instructions in the user manual. We actually have prepared a short guide on installing water softeners systems depending on the chosen model.
Maintenance and Consumables
No one wants to invest in a product that requires daily maintenance and constant purchase of consumables.
For example, if you decide on a salt-based water softener, you will have to constantly buy bags of salt to supply the softener's brine tank. This system needs salt for its regeneration cycle that happens after a certain period, and it cannot function without it.
Even though this needs to be done once every 6-8 weeks, some older models won't let you know when it's time for a salt refill. So, you should avoid these water softeners if you do not get too well with your memory.
Moreover, some water purification systems use filters that need replacement after a few months, usually twice a year. If the filters are not replaced in time, they will not only stop the system from working, but may worsen the condition of your water once it passes through. This is the case of refrigerator water filters that filter back the impurities retained over time into your water if not changed without delay.
The best thing you can do is to inform if the filtration system you want to buy uses filters or a certain "fuel" to regenerate such as salt or potassium chloride. If so, find out how often you will have to change those filters or refill the system and what costs each one involves.
The Price
If so far we have discussed the dissimilarities that water purification systems have in terms of technology, maintenance, and installation, there is one more thing that differentiates them - the price.
A water softener can start from 200-300 $. However, their price can vary greatly depending on additional costs like in the case of salt-based water softeners that need regular salt refills and money invested in hiring a professional for installation.
At the same time, an advanced system can cost up to 1000 $ but will never require professional help for installation or even user intervention after is done. The purpose of buying a water filtration system is to solve the problem of hard water and impurities in its consistency. Therefore, such an investment is meant to bring long-term benefits, not to constantly attract costs.
Other Considerations
Apart from a water filtration system, we also recommend a water descaler to ensure the reduction of hardness. Unlike a water softener, a descaler won't put any sodium into your water, nor will it modify its composition.
Our Yarna Water Descaler CWD24 is very affordable when compared to other available options. It isn't limited by GPG or GPM and it can be installed in just about 15 minutes using only the things that come inside the box.
Moreover, our water descalers came with a one-year money-back guarantee that you can even extend to 10 years by simply registering your product on our website.
All Things Considered
Unclean water is a serious matter. Therefore, choosing a suitable water filtration system for your home cannot be a hasty decision.
We hope that our article will help you find a suitable filtration system for your home. Keep in mind to choose a model that can treat the contaminants present in your water, that does not require time-consuming maintenance or an installation almost as expensive as the initial price of the product.
