Under kitchen sink H2O filter

[muddywings]

Our builder grade kitchen faucet started leaking so it was time to upgrade. I installed one that had a detachable sprayer head and put the cheapo soap dispenser in the 4th hole that was for the old sprayer.
The wife would like to put in an under the sink filter unit and use that 4th hole for a filtered water faucet.
Not really a DIY request as it will be easy enough to do, but more a request for opinions/suggestions.
(My main concern will be filter replacement--don't want to have something similar to a crappy printer that eats the toner constantly)

What do you all recommend in the $200ish range.

Thanks

[Wulf202]

Reverse osmosis has no filter to change.

[muddywings]

true but I'd like to keep the good stuff in the water from my understanding
filter=leaves good minerals in
osmosis=takes everything I mean everything out

[MarkCO]

RO wastes huge amounts of water, 10:1, and most still have a filter element. RO water is pure, and you really should not drink it regularly. Cooking with it pulls out more nutrients than tap water. Unless you are using it to make medicine or lab grade something, do not go RO.

Do you have a water filter in your fridge? If yes, why not use that water? Those filters are pretty decent. With ALL filters, they need to be changed as recommended. If you do not, then the water is not filtered as well and the polymer will degrade and eventually fracture.

Denver water is pretty good. Our water is, on average used 1.5 times when you get it from the tap. Louisiana is 42 times used. There are some metabolized pharmaceuticals that have been detected, but the filters won't remove those. In Louisiana, they have over 30 detectable pharmaceuticals in their tap water both metabolized and non-metabolized.

If you want one of the better undersinks, I would suggest the Aquasana 2 stage. Just make sure you change the filters on schedule. This is also the ONLY brand I have never seen fail and flood a house.

[SAnd]

I can't address the kind of filter but I an say to mount it where it is easy to change the filter, not where it is easy to mount. Some inconvenience during installation will pay off when it comes time to change the filters. I've mounted a couple in the basement at waist high just to make it easy to change the filters. A lot of the time you will spill some water changing them too. The easier it is to change the filter the more likely you are to change it when you should.

[muddywings]

RO wastes huge amounts of water, 10:1, and most still have a filter element. RO water is pure, and you really should not drink it regularly. Cooking with it pulls out more nutrients than tap water. Unless you are using it to make medicine or lab grade something, do not go RO.

Do you have a water filter in your fridge? If yes, why not use that water? Those filters are pretty decent. With ALL filters, they need to be changed as recommended. If you do not, then the water is not filtered as well and the polymer will degrade and eventually fracture.

Denver water is pretty good. Our water is, on average used 1.5 times when you get it from the tap. Louisiana is 42 times used. There are some metabolized pharmaceuticals that have been detected, but the filters won't remove those. In Louisiana, they have over 30 detectable pharmaceuticals in their tap water both metabolized and non-metabolized.

If you want one of the better undersinks, I would suggest the Aquasana 2 stage. Just make sure you change the filters on schedule. This is also the ONLY brand I have never seen fail and flood a house.

Thanks-was looking at Aquasana anyway. Problem solved then!

[Zman]

Yea, I am similar ... put a GE whole house filter ($30, 1' tall) on the cold line with activated charcoal cartridge to remove chlorine and late fall algae favors. Lasts about 2 years.

Z

[fly boy]

this is by no means an attack, just a curiosity question....... I grew up drinking tap water, and still to this day drink it (Even in Wichita Falls - look up toilet to tap). The local filtering takes out all the bad things, and in some cases actually put things back into the water. Why in this day in age are so many people adamant about drinking "purified" or "bottled" water? Just curious is all.

[MarkCO]

this is by no means an attack, just a curiosity question....... I grew up drinking tap water, and still to this day drink it (Even in Wichita Falls - look up toilet to tap). The local filtering takes out all the bad things, and in some cases actually put things back into the water. Why in this day in age are so many people adamant about drinking "purified" or "bottled" water? Just curious is all.

A good portion of it is marketing. In the 60-90s, chlorine levels, and some nasties, were much higher than today and in some respects, that helped create a water filter industry that has fought to survive in the last decade. When a company can sell $10 of materials for $100 (water filtration system) and $.06 cost bottle of water for $1.00 and more, free enterprise says go for it. Denver Water is some of the best in the country with no violations in the recent past and contaminant and disinfectant levels well below the Federal requirements. Here is the current Denver Water Report: http://www.denverwater.org/docs/assets/DC0C0E3A-03C5-4F27-2E7ED15D1413CD18/2015WaterQualityReport.pdf

All water districts have such reports and most are self explanatory.

However, and especially if you live in an old house, that is not what is delivered at your faucet. You have a service lateral and residential plumbing. In old neighborhoods, your service lateral can be a lead pipe, galvanized pipe or even a steel or copper pipe with old style lead solder. The first slug of water from a lead pipe in the morning can have lead concentrations over the allowable limits. So there are cases where drinking and cooking water should be filtered. If you have a newer home, 1990s built or more current, the use of a water filter for drinking water in the Denver Metro area is likely a waste of money. I use tap water and we drink from the fridge water that has a taste and odor filter only.

RO and ultra-purified water is actually, from a health perspective, harmful to drink as it will pull nutrients out of your digestive tract. Cooking with it (like veggies) extracts the nutrients as well. Pure water is an organic solvent. One of my fellow lab techs (when I worked in a water quality lab for a pharmaceutical company) thought the whole drinking pure water thing was urban legend and so he decided to drink the most pure water we made (suitable for injection and a carrier for water based drugs) and at about a month he ended up in the hospital, very sick, malnourished and all kinds of issues. He recovered, but it took 6 months.

Bottled water, in most cases, is tap water run through a taste and odor filter. If you buy commercially bottled water that is packaged in a state outside of CO, you are drinking water with a worse quality than your tap water. In the past decade, the biggest fear has been metabolized (used and the byproducts enter the sewer) and non-metabolized (active ingredients) pharmaceuticals. There has been research, but a lot of it is being suppressed and, for the most part, there can be no control or human tests. This is especially worrisome for persons who are on prescribed drugs and the potential interactions, or pregnant women and children. If I lived in CA, TX, or any of the Midwest to Southeast states. and had a family member using prescription drugs, young kids or planning on having kids, I would use a purification system for drinking water and then add a mineral pack back into the water.

I do actually work on municipal water systems as a consultant and have an educational and experiential background in water quality and water purification systems in case anyone wonders.

[fly boy]

Thanks, that is exactly what I was looking for!!!

My step-dad ran the Louisville Water Treatment Plant, and got their water from Eldorado springs. Walmart value brand water was just Louisville's tap water.

When we lived in Texas, I drank the tap water, but we had a filter on the sink for the wife and girls. The had the "toilet-to-tap" program in the city.... http://www.cbsnews.com/news/toilet-to-tap-wastewater-recycling-begins-in-wichita-falls-texas/

[Wulf202]

Markco described the effects of drinking distilled water. Ro is not pure like distilled. Ro can opereate at 1.1:1 and typically operates at 3 to 5:1 in home applications.

There are no other filtration systems that I am aware of that do not require any cartridges to be changed per the op request.

Z man. Be careful removing the chlorine before the tap. You can get some nasties growing from the faucet. It would be advisable to push bleach thru atleast every filter change