Newspaper
Why your home should have a water-filtering system
The Arizona Republic
If your home gets water from the city, it’s clean and safe to drink. Still, it’s “hard” water, and frankly, it could taste better.Lots of Arizona homeowners have installed water softeners or filters so the water coming out of the tap looks, feels and tastes the way they like it. You’ll find all kinds of water treatment gadgets if you look on the Internet, so buyer beware. Avoid any equipment that has no trustworthy certification that shows it’s been tested and proven.
To deal with your water at home, I recommend installing a water softener and a reverse osmosis system.
A reverse osmosis system mounted under your kitchen sink will improve the taste of your water enormously.
A sort of super water filter, the reverse osmosis system removes up to 98 percent of the metals, pathogens, chlorine and dirt that can add foul smells and tastes to the water you drink and cook with.
Here’s how it works: Your drinking water flows through the system’s filter, which removes sediment, chlorine taste and odor, and tiny contaminants. Then the system pushes the water through a semi-permeable membrane that catches most dissolved solids and flushes them down the drain.
The result is clean, filtered water that stays in the device’s storage tank until you turn on the tap. Its filter removes or absorbs tastes and odors just before it flows through your faucet.
A quality system costs an average of $700 and $900 installed, depending on how large your home is and the quality of the equipment.
A tip: You’ll need to change the filter once a year. I like to have a qualified water treatment specialist to do it. If you touch the filter by accident, bacteria from your hands can contaminate your drinking water.
A reverse osmosis system won’t soften our hard water, though. For that, I recommend a whole-house water softener.
You need a whole-house device because hard water, which contains too many dissolved minerals like calcium and magnesium, can be hard on your plumbing pipes and fixtures, prevent soap from lathering and leave scaly rings—called limescale— around your faucets and drains. Limescale in your water heater can shorten its life, and it can render a tankless water heater inoperable in very short order. Some manufacturer’s warranties even exclude scale build-up, so if you don’t prevent it, you could be stuck replacing your water heater on your own dime.
A water softener works by using sodium ions to remove calcium and magnesium from the water. You’ll spend up to $4,000 or $5,000 for a quality water softener, depending on the size of your house and family, and another $2 and $8 a month replacing the salt that supplies the sodium.
You’ll save money once it’s in, though. My friend Robin Pettyjohn of Water Treatment Technologies estimates that a water softener will pay for itself within four years by saving your family on soap, hand lotion, rubber gloves, laundry detergent and cleaning supplies because you can use less of those products when you have soft water in the home. Plus, he says, you can save substantial money on water heating when your heater works more efficiently because it’s not clogged with limescale.
It’s possible to buy cheaper products that claim to descale your pipes, but they don’t remove the harmful minerals in the water that cause limescale to form. You also can buy less-expensive charcoal filters to clean your water of odor and bad taste, but they don’t purify it as thoroughly as a reverse-osmosis system.
At my house, I’m sticking with what works. When I shop for water treatment solutions, I shop the company first and the product second. There’s no better deal than the one you get from a trusted professional who really knows which products work and which ones fail.
Choose carefully and do your homework before buying a water-treatment device. And if you run across anyone who uses scare tactics to try to close a sale, escort him or her off your property immediately.
For more do-it-yourself tips and Arizona’s most-trusted contractor referral network, go to rosieonthehouse.com. Rosie Romero is an Arizona contractor who has been in the Arizona home building and remodeling industry for 35 years. He has a radio program from 8-11 a.m. Saturdays on KTAR-FM (92.3), from 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays on KNST-AM (790) in Tucson, and from 8 –11 a.m. Saturdays on KAZM-AM (780) in Northern Arizona.
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