f13.net

My brita filter developed mold (yuck!) and I'm tired of dumping heavy money into filters and refilling the damn tank in the fridge all the time.

As such, I've decided on a under-cabinet water filtration system. I want to get a reverse-osmosis system to filter out ALL the nasties, especially the fluoride (call me crazy) and chlorine that I talked about in general discussion. I really just don't need this shit in my water, and I'm willing to pay a hundred or two extra up-front cost to not have have to be constantly refilling the pitcher and also so I can use it for cooking and tea. The bonus is that filters are cheap and last for years with moderate use, instead of the brita one I have to replace once every month or so.

Does anyone have any experience / done any research on the different models available? I don't have a consumer reports account, unfortunately, so I can't check there, and google gives me a dozen or so different companies, all with fairly similar systems. So, I turn to you, fellow readers, to help me out. Does anyone have experience shopping for these things?

I have used Culligan's "Good water system" since 1998. 

Supposedly the best on the market.

We're renting so we can't go that route, but I salute your plan.  We moved with our cooler and just ordered water finally to be dropped off.  It's about $35/month, so your plan is probably better...

If you happen to live near a Home Depot, GE's SmartWater RO system is comparable to Culligan's Good Water system (both are 3 stage RO systems with the membrane in the middle stage) and it may make buying replacement filters easier. Culligan's Aqua-Cleer has more filtration stages than the other two (the more filters in front of the membrane the greater potential lifespan of the membrane filter).

Also be aware that RO systems can waste a lot of water, depending on the system. Efficient systems "only" waste about a gallon for every gallon of drinking water produced. Some can waste 4 - 5 gallons per gallon produced.

Yeah, I am not concerned about water wastage. It's not like I'm taking a shower with the thing. I'll check out the thing at home depot.

See if they have another water chip.

Clean it.

Get one of the ones with a 1-month timer on the top (like this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brita-Marella-White-Water-Filter/dp/B000B4OA5Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=kitchen&qid=1232706005&sr=1-1)), get a white one so you can see when it's dirty, and put it in the washing up every time you change the filter (i.e. once a month!).

Fuck cleaning it.  Buy cheap vodka and filter it with your Britta.  Two birds, one stone.

I think this is the Culligan system we have in our home. Not sure. It was here when we moved in. We pay $9 a month for equipment rental and service.

It takes a couple of passes, but this does make cheap vodka pretty good.  Drinking water through that filter afterwards not as much.

We have hard water that calcifies in our low flow faucets and fucks everything up. I would really like to put in a whole house filter of some kind. Anyone have any experience with something like that?

I know my parent's river house has that, but no details.  So I know it exists.  Any specific questions I could ask dad about?  (It came with the place, so we didn't do installation.)

My parents did that.  $$$ and quite a maintenance beast every 3-4 months as I recall (mostly dealing with 40lb bags of salt).

Yeah, but it'll kill the mold!

A water softener is probably less expensive than a whole house water filter. If you wanted to get a whole house water filter and were willing to spend the megabucks for a top-notch system take a look at GE's Homespring system:

http://www.homespring.com/

If you want more information about it you can Google on "Zenon water filter". GE bought Zenon whose products used to be (badly) marketed by Maytag.

I also like this forum for learning about plumbing stuff:

http://www.terrylove.com/forums/index.php

Actually it probably won't. You need 70% alcohol for effective sterilisation and even then it's not all that effective against fungal spores...

Look, i threw the moldy thing away. It's gone. It was a $30 pitcher and it was the last straw.

Why would you filter out Flouride?  Do you want you kids' teeth to rot or something?

Like masturbation, fluoride causes madness and sterility. It's a well known fact.

edit: grammar

This came up briefly in another thread. There's pretty much no evidence (http://www.badscience.net/2008/02/foreign-substances-in-your-precious-bodily-fluids/) that fluoridating drinking water reduces tooth decay.

I followed your link and found this"


That's a far cry from your statement

That quote is not in the article I linked.

I presume it's in one of the various studies he links to in that article? In which case you should read the article I linked a bit more carefully. For example:


Basically there is some evidence that fluoridating water might be beneficial. There is also some evidence that it might be harmful. There is very little good quality research and a lot of very poor quality research. There's a lot of "maybe" and "might" behind such a vast and expensive program that's supposed to address a public health issue, but which could also be doing considerable harm.

I'm not saying fluoridation is outright bad, I'm not saying it's outright good. I'm agreeing with the idea it's more complicated than that and that more research is needed. BTW until this week I had no idea that the research supporting fluoridation of water was so poor and so scarce. It was only in response to a post by bhodi that I looked it up.

And, most of it has centered around children. I'm not a child. I don't have children. I also don't need to drink something that was put into my water "for my own good", on the basis of poor science decades ago. It *might* have beneficial health effects, for children anyway, and it most assuredly has negative ones - fluorosis/mottling of teeth. Which I have. Thanks, assholes.

It's impossible to escape fluoride totally, since it's in almost every packaged liquid - beer, soda, tea - heck, even most foods are prepared with fluoride-infused water. I can, however, reduce it in this one specific case. Also, the government does not exactly have the best track record of knowing what is and isn't good as far as additives are concerned, and it's worth (as I said) a little bit more upfront cost to protect myself against not only this potential danger, but other known impurities and additives (especially chlorine or chlorine-like substances - I don't need to be drinking those, either).

You know when fluoridation first began? Nineteen hundred and forty-six. Nineteen forty-six, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.

You are awesome. I love the new avatar.

Possibly my favourite film of all time that  :awesome_for_real:

We had someone come bid a system from Kinetico (sp?) for our house that was a combo filtration/softener.

5 grand.  :uhrr:

I figure I can stuff a sock in the main pipe.

That's what she said.

Speaking of water softeners, we looked at the perfect house last year...but it had a lot of iron in the well water. Discussed dealing with that for the next couple decades and decided to buy another house that wasn't quite so perfect. But the water is splendid!

Some systems recycle the waste water by feeding it into something that you're probably not going to drink, like your hot water.  Probably makes installation a fair bit pricier, though.

Re: Fluoridation

It's only anecdotal, but that's all I have. I grew up in the land of fluoridated waters. Our 'city water' was processed and sent into the pipes. While I won't say my record with cavities is due to it (I've had just one) I will say this: When I moved to SoCal and had my first dentist visit, the guy looked at my teeth and immediately said "You grew up in the Midwest didn't you?" When I asked what his clue was (I was not wearing a U of M shirt/hat) he said my teeth were strong and this was the case with every person he had treated that grew up with Midwestern water. His patients that were native to SoCal were consistently weaker in terms of their teeth health.

Which could all be crap, but there ya go. Makes me a believer.

Re: Whole house filtration

I don't know if it's what you guys are talking about, but many folks back home have water softening systems to tackle the hard water. It's effectively maintenance free beyond the need to put in the 40lb bags of salt as you work the system down. I have no idea about waste, etc. but it gets the job done and really isn't all that hard. Unless you can't pick the bag up to dump the salt in. Culligan even provides some of those systems. It's easy after install.

Problem is that we, as humans, are very susceptible to anecdotal evidence like this. Everybody knows someone who's auntie Doris had her lumbago cured forever by homeopathy, which doesn't stop homeopathy from being a heap of ridiculous bullshit.

That's why we need good, solid, reliable research on things, especially when it comes to blanket health programs costing millions of $/£ and affecting millions of people without them having any real choice in the matter. And good, solid, reliable research on the benefits to dental health of fluoridation programs is badly lacking unfortunately.

I like the tinfoil hat conspiracy theory put forth by the "fit for life" nutjob. In his second book he puts forth the theory that flouride (states it as a waste by product of the aluminum industry i think) was going to be required to be treated as a toxic waste, so the bigwigs paid for a study that proved it was so good for your teeth that we would be fools if we didn't demand the government purchase it from them and dump it into our water supply.

Pretty much version 2.0 of what he says the dairy industry did with whey in book 1.

It does make you wonder a bit when the pediatrician tells you not to let your kid use regular toothpaste until they are old enough to understand not to injest it.

I often hear that the reason for Scotland having a high number of people with poor dental health is because of the soft water. But really it stands to reason that poor dental health is a bigger factor. Britain may have a decent national health system, but it doesn't adequately cover dental health. Which means that most people either have to spend several years after they move or reach adulthood to get onto the list of a local NHS dentist or they have to pay the full cost themselves. The insurance is worse than in the US because fewer people are paying into it, and the dental costs are higher because outside of the limited NHS system, there's less competition. So in economically depressed areas, and that's most of Scotland sadly, most people just don't go to the dentist until they are in agony and need an extraction. Couple that with higher than average numbers of people with poor diets and who smoke, and you'll see that the local water just don't matter a fucking bit.

But it helps chemical plants sell fluoride, so there are plenty of people amping up the benefits of water fluoridation despite the fact that if we'd just better fund dental health or means test access to publicly funded dentistry we'd see a much greater improvement.

Ding ding ding! Even if fluoride could be shown unequivocally to have a net positive effect on dental health it would be of far lower importance than these things.

The soft water took me by surprise though when I first moved to Scotland. Having lived my entire life in areas where the water was harder than diamonds I had no idea just how much foam that handful of shower gel was going to produce the first time I got in the shower  :uhrr:

Put fluoride in Tennant's and everyone will be happy.

I absolutely believe that fluoride kills off whatever makes cavities, just like they told us in school.  I reckon if you put enough poison in yourself, it'll kill off everything!  If I ever live in England again, I also plan to drink 8 oz. of hot Rydlyme every day so that my plumbing doesn't end up looking like the inside of my electric kettle.