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Berkey filter with charcoal elements. Supposedly it can remove bacteria (but not viruses). All I know for sure is that it makes the water taste a lot better. I

by injb 4y ago

Berkey filter with charcoal elements. Supposedly it can remove bacteria (but not viruses). All I know for sure is that it makes the water taste a lot better. I've had the same filter elements in mine for years. Recently I needed a glass of water for my night stand and the filter was empty. It's slow to fill so I just filled the glass from the tap. I thought the chlorine would evaporate overnight. Well maybe it did, but one way or another the water still tasted gross the next morning. So the filters are still doing something. And that's after 5 years.

amluto 4y ago
Huh. They claim they’re tested by a lab that does NSF testing, but they don’t appear here: https://info.nsf.org/Certified/DWTU/ https://info.nsf.org/Certified/DWTU/ Also, its’s expensive. I consider this to be a baseline: https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/v000517548/ https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/v000517548/ It’s genuinely NSF listed, varies from about $40 to about $60, and has pretty good throughput. For anything fancier, I would either get an RO system with a permeate pump (and I would absolutely do this if I lived somewhere with annoyingly hard water) or a commercial system. Check webstaurantstore.com or similar. If you have a dramatic taste improvement with filtration, you probably have chlorinated water. IMO it tastes nasty, is easy to remove, and is harmless to drink at normal concentrations if the chemistry is right. Lobby your utility to switch to chloramine for residual disinfection. (If you spend time around pools, you might be familiar with these compounds in a swimming pool context. Chlorine has a mild clean smell, and many people don’t love it in their drinking water. Chlorine plus many organic things turns into monochloramine, dichloramine, and nitrogen trichloride. These are collectively called “combined chlorine”. The latter two are utterly disgusting and possibly quite harmful, and the nasty “chlorine” smell in less well maintained pools, especially indoors, is those. Pure monochloramine is inoffensive in reasonable concentrations.)

by injb 4y ago

amluto 4y ago

Huh. They claim they’re tested by a lab that does NSF testing, but they don’t appear here: https://info.nsf.org/Certified/DWTU/ https://info.nsf.org/Certified/DWTU/ Also, its’s expensive. I consider this to be a baseline: https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/v000517548/ https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/v000517548/ It’s genuinely NSF listed, varies from about $40 to about $60, and has pretty good throughput. For anything fancier, I would either get an RO system with a permeate pump (and I would absolutely do this if I lived somewhere with annoyingly hard water) or a commercial system. Check webstaurantstore.com or similar. If you have a dramatic taste improvement with filtration, you probably have chlorinated water. IMO it tastes nasty, is easy to remove, and is harmless to drink at normal concentrations if the chemistry is right. Lobby your utility to switch to chloramine for residual disinfection. (If you spend time around pools, you might be familiar with these compounds in a swimming pool context. Chlorine has a mild clean smell, and many people don’t love it in their drinking water. Chlorine plus many organic things turns into monochloramine, dichloramine, and nitrogen trichloride. These are collectively called “combined chlorine”. The latter two are utterly disgusting and possibly quite harmful, and the nasty “chlorine” smell in less well maintained pools, especially indoors, is those. Pure monochloramine is inoffensive in reasonable concentrations.)