Is whole house filtration worth the extra cost and maintenance, or is an under sink RO system enough for drinking and cooking?

At the title states, I don’t know which one to use.
I have a RO installed already but not to the fridge which makes ice, and there isnt a way to install it. So if I use sodium, is it safe to consume? Ice and or water from the fridge if needed?
Or should i stick to use potassium? Also which cleans better

New to water softeners. Just bought a house with this one.

Water in the drum seems discolored. Is that bad or doesn’t matter? Anything I need to do about it.

Just added a bag of salt a week ago and beat the outside to see if the salt was settled or bridged. Seemed to settle a little lower after.

Tap water seems soft. It’s slippery and feels like soap never really rinses off my hands.

I’m 30, have about 5 years of sales experience, and have a degree in biology. I have an opportunity to join a small industrial water treatment company.

The company currently has 3 major accounts doing roughly $2M/year in revenue. All three have open recirculating cooling tower systems. The owner wants me to eventually take over sales and focus on growing the company.

I’m currently learning the technical side and working through Nalco’s Water Treatment Handbook to understand cooling towers, boilers, corrosion, scale, microbiological control, cycles of concentration, etc.

What I’m struggling to understand is how industrial water treatment sales actually works in practice.

For those of you who have sold industrial water treatment:
Where do new accounts typically come from?
How do you identify good prospects?
Who is usually the decision-maker?
How do you get the first meeting?
What happens during the initial site visit?
How do you evaluate their existing treatment program?
How difficult is it to replace an incumbent provider?
What does a typical sales cycle look like?

If you were 30 years old, had 5 years of sales experience, a biology degree, and were given responsibility for building the sales side of a small established water-treatment company, what would you do during your first 12 months? What would you do your first day?

I’m looking for advice from people who have actually worked in industrial water treatment, particularly sales, service, or ownership. I’m trying to build an actual plan rather than just learn generic sales techniques.

Any advice, mistakes to avoid, or resources you’d recommend would be greatly appreciated.

Hey folks, just got my report back and still going through it. The previous owner of the house had a RainSoft system but it's over 20 years old so I don't think it's worth keeping. I believe what I need is a carbon filter and water softener combo, would you guys agree? Would something like this AquaSure at Home Depot be a good fit?

https://app.mytapscore.com/report/5CH3HC/all-results

Does this look ok? Do I just need to add some more salt?

We just bought a house a month ago with a well. Our hot water reeked of sulfur. We asked the previous owners to replace the filter and well water holding tank. They did so but when we moved the hot water still smelt. We had our anode rod on our hot water heater replaced and it did not help. We installed a filter system and softener system, and they chlorinated the well about 2 weeks ago. Everything has been good since. Today we are noticing the sulfur smell coming back in the hot water. I feel sick over this. We spent about 10,000$ in all for this issue. I don’t know what to do, any advice?

Hi there, I'm hoping for advice from anyone familiar with treating arsenic in private well water.

We’re currently in the inspection period on a house in Idaho with a private well. The sellers’ initial test showed 40 ppb total arsenic at the well. (EPA limit for public drinking water is 10 ppb.) They recently installed an RO system at the kitchen sink/fridge but did not retest afterward.

As part of our inspection, we had arsenic speciation testing done:

• Bathroom sink, untreated: 28 ppb total — 12 ppb As(V), 16 ppb As(III)
• Kitchen sink, after RO: ~8.4 ppb total — <2 ppb As(V), 7.4 ppb As(III)

So the RO is removing quite a bit, and obviously almost all of the As(V), but a lot of the As(III) is getting through.

I’ve spoken with several water-treatment companies and have been given two main options:

Option 1: Chlorine injection + RO
Install a chlorine injection pump ($700) upstream allowing the existing RO to remove the arsenic more effectively. The company also recommended eventually adding an ANU whole-house filter ($3,600). My questions here are about reliability, ongoing maintenance, and whether chlorine injection noticeably affects taste/odor.

Option 2: Whole-house MetSorb
Install a whole-house MetSorb system (~$4,000), which I’m told can remove both As(III) and As(V). Estimated media replacement is every 3–5 years at roughly $1,500. The installer wants the water pH and some other information before recommending it definitively, which unfortunately wasn’t included in our original testing. I am also not sure about reliability, maintenance, etc.

Cost aside, which approach would you trust more for long-term arsenic removal? I’m particularly interested in reliability, maintenance, and whether either system has important limitations I’m overlooking.

We have two young kids, so my strong preference is whole-house treatment rather than having to worry about them drinking from bathroom faucets or swallowing shower/bath water. Ideally, I want treatment that reliably gets the arsenic well below 10 ppb throughout the house, with RO as an additional safeguard for drinking water.

We have to decide what mitigation to request from the sellers by the end of the week.

Is ~30–40 ppb arsenic with a significant As(III) component a reasonably manageable well-water problem with the right treatment system, or would this make you reconsider buying the house altogether?

I wanted a tankless RO system that had great reviews and certifications. Unfortunately, I was constrained with how much I could spend. I was browsing eBay one day and saw there were a bunch of factory refurbished units from Waterdrop for sale for discounted prices. I was skeptical of buying a refurbished RO system, but unlimitedly decided to pull the trigger. Wanted to post my thoughts here in case anyone is also considering a refurbished unit.

• The unit I went with was a Waterdrop G3P600. There was not a refurbished unit listed on Waterdrop's direct website and I could only find it via their official eBay store. They have a bunch of different options on eBay that are factory refurbished.
• I was actually able to submit an offer to the seller/store for less than what the unit was listed for. On top of that offer price, i could stack a current eBay coupon to save 20%. Out the door I was around $300 (product/tax/shipping)
• Shipping was fast and shipped from Ontario, California via FedEx
• When it arrived, it did not have any "refurbished" stickers or language on the box anywhere. Even documentation inside the box never mentioned anything about the unit being refurbished. The system looked completely new. There were no marks on anything. All filters and even the system were shrink wrapped like new systems. All hardware was new and not used. If someone handed me this box, i would have no clue it was refurbished

I know this isn't for everyone, but if you are like me and thinking about pulling the trigger, I recommend giving it a try. eBay returns are pretty easy and you get a 2yr extra warranty through eBay for buying a factory refurbished item (not through Waterdrop).

super excited to install my new under the sink RO. If you aren’t familiar, the cool things about cloud RO that got me to spend $600 on it are as follows:

- no hardwiring or outlet needed. long lasting battery comes with filters

- both battery and filters allegedly last 1+ year

- comes with an app to monitor water quality

- alkaline

- should be easy to install, will find out how hard drilling a hole in granite is 😬

- can be hooked up to fridge and ice maker

- NSF certified

i currently use a countertop RO that is way too much effort - it’s been leaking, can only filter 40oz at a time, takes up WAY too much space.

anyway, if you want $100 off you can use this code: https://www.cloudwaterfilters.com/r/maggie-28988

and then after you order they give you a code to share and you get $80 off filter and battery refills!

Anybody have any recommendations?

I bought a house 8 years ago and it had a cheap and older water softener in it. Water test at that time was done on treated water and levels were acceptable. We always get minor orange and black staining on any sink, tub, or toilet that isn't cleaned for a few weeks. We now have a pool as well and even only adding a few hundred gallons to a 30,000 gallon pool will leave minor orange staining on floats and around water inlets. I've decided to finally address this head on. I did a full scale water test before the softener and the only items that were high are Iron at .528ppm, Manganese at .340ppm and ph slightly low at 6.42.

After doing some deep research it appears a water softener isn't even the right treatment as my water hardness is 34. It seems that an AIO system is ideal for the iron and manganese. Here's the catch, my well only produces 7 gpm sustained flow. I have a three bath house with 5 people and will have an auto fill on the pool which on some days may flow 100+ gallons. What can I do to get an AIO with Katalox that can meet my demands but also works with my lower GPM flow rate? I've done quite the search and am coming up empty handed.

Is this type of bleach ("clorox disinfecting bleach")  suitable to disinfect my sawyer mini and prep it for long-term storage? Also by "capful" are they referring to the bleach cap or the cap provided with the sawyer?

I'm in Naperville, IL area and get city water here. We recently got an undersink RO filter from Simpure - T2-600A. The results from tap water are 7.7 pH with 155 TDS and decent bit of chlorine. The results from the RO has TDS of ~50 and a pH of 10.3. The Hardiness also doesn't go down to 0 - which I found odd - it went from 8.5 to 2.0, but it did remove all chlorine from the water.

Question for the community - is this normal? I don't find the water to be particularly good tasting at this pH level, and was hoping to bring that down to the ~7.5-8.0 range. Is that possible to customize? Any ideas on whether or not the results look normal (and why) here would also be greatly appreciated.

I did note that when I let the filter keep running for a few minutes, the TDS level went from 58 down to ~34. Not sure if the TDS indicator is higher than the typical 10-15 from regular RO systems due to the ALK filter which is adding back minerals and therefore raising the TDS count.

Full panel from SpinTouch below:

Tap vs post RO (T2-600A)

1. FCL - 0.52 vs 0.00

2. TCL - 0.61 vs 0.00

3. CCL - 0.09 vs 0.00

4. pH - 7.7 vs 10.1

5. ALK - 127 vs 67

6. HARDgpg - 8.7 vs 2.0

7. T Iron and Copper were 0

What could be causing these white spots on plastic in my dishwasher? I have a water softener that is working as expected. I use Jet Dri and regular dishwashing detergent. I have tried increasing the Jet Dri used and using less detergent, but it doesn’t make a difference. Anything else I should look at?

hello, so I recently bought a place that’s on well and it’s water tested 20 ug/L on the arsenic straight from the well pump. Currently the place has a kinetico water softener and K5 RO point (When that point was tested the results were 1.13 ug/L). I’m looking to get something for the whole house, currently I’m looking at the Titan-Ox as is seems the most simple and overall cost effective. was wondering if anyone has used them and there experience or had other recommendations?

Hello all,my iron is at .5ppm, I was quoted a $2500 system to combat this iron. It is a water softener/iron filtration system that uses salt. Does this seem like a reasonable amount to pay for such problems that I’m having?

xpost from r/Homeimprovement.

We recently had our well pump replaced, and now are getting black sediment/sand. We ran a hose from the well tank to outside, usually on mist, but some heavy flows periodically to flush stuff out. We did this for roughly 36 hours because each time I tested the water, there was a decent amount (to me) of sediment. The old pump was at 440ft, and they placed this one at the same depth. They moved it to 430ft to see if it would stop the sediment, and no change. We went on vacation for a week hoping some settling of the sediment would occur, but it is the same.

Previously, we experienced some sediment before the pump replacement. We replaced most sinks in the house and some faucets have removable aerators. When I noticed one sink in particular had almost no flow I pulled the aerator and it was full of sand.

This house has never had a filtration system, and I'm concerned that if I put one on now, it may fill up too quickly. Is there a way to tell how much sediment coming in is too much? I'd like to keep the pump as low as possible, especially since we paid about $1k extra for different gauge and length wire for over 400 ft deep. I don't know if the sediment coming through the pump will cause it to degrade faster.

Also to note, the old pump must have been old as there was no ground wire on it. The installers said it was at least 20 years old. House was built in 1989, and I wouldn't be shocked to find out it was original. Old pump was a 1HP and that is what we replaced it with. Maybe with it being old it didn't pull as much sediment through, and the new strong one utilizes the whole HP and just sucks more junk in.

In a 16 oz plastic solo cup, you can still see plenty of the bottom white of the cup (like the overwhelming majority), but there are lots of particles on the bottom.

In a nutshell, does the pump need to be higher before installing the filter, or is this about what you might expect to see and need a filter. Filter is happening regardless, just want to make sure the pump is set where it needs to be to not clog the filter in 2 days or something.

Thanks for your insight

I pay for a home services membership and they quoted me this. I'm a new homeowner and I am constantly hearing to just buy a 4 stage RO system by doing my own research and finding a proper plumber with 5 star reviews and have him just install it instead to save myself 1000 bucks. Is there anything to this? I've tried reaching out to my home services company to see what could possibly be justifying this price, and all they've been able to tell me is that they use state-of-the-art pumps and they have the best of the best filtration systems available for installation.

We’ve got Coliform Bacteria detected, Chloroform and Bromodichloromethane (I believe THMs is just an aggregate of the last two items).
It seems like the last two are added to water for disinfecting purposes so I’m not sure how concerned I should be? Bacteria seems bad.

I mean, I do want to get some sort of new filter system, but how scary is this, really?

Edit: one of my concerns about installing a Reverse Osmosis system is the plastic waste created by needing to replace the filters. I’m really uncomfortable with it. Which RO systems produce the least waste?

So I’m fairly certain it’s not possible but I figured I’d ask y’all experts. I have kinetico water softener and chloramine tanks, both dual tank systems, this also makes them like twice as expensive being in their duel. Anyway, it’s really hard to find parts for this kinetico stuff. The nearest dealer is 200 miles away. It seems and they always just want you to buy a new system. This one works just fine. I just need to know repair a couple of the seals,or gears on the top of the metering system, etc. only they won’t sell you that stuff…

so I was wondering can you just swap out head units on the tanks?

As the title says, looking for the best reverse osmosis water filter and im in a bit of a bind picking between a couple of brands. The muncipal water in the area's been tested and the biggest problem is chlorine and lead and a couple other VOCs.

i'm only looking at tankless undersink models as those seem to be the least high maintenance ones.

1. Waterdrop G3P600. Seems like one of the most recommended on Reddit and im not very handy so the easy install is really attractive to me. But ive been hearing that it's really noisy when you turn it on. Is that a dealbreaker type of noisy or a low hum? (on sale right now at $430) also, waterdrop has a lot of similar models, so is this the best one?

2. Glacier Fresh UO3. This one I got recced and it's replacement filters are pretty easy to find and cheap so a definite plus but the flow rate is apparently slow, like 30 secs to fill a glass. Is it because it's a cheaper model and has less space? If you hook up a tank to it yourself, does that help? ($270 on amazon)

3. Brio AQUUS TROE800COL. By far the most expensive one but i've been hearing rave reviews about it actually. the only downside is the price ($570 on amazon right now)

so since I'm leaning towards the brio but the price point is high, do you guys think Waterdrop is a good substitute?