Which Water Filter?

[BRUTE]

Also, filters remove the fluoride that helps keep your teeth healthy.

alternatively, one could not put poison in the water supply, and use tooth paste with fluoride in it. just a thought.

in brute's experience, no other country thought it a great idea to poison their drinking water to combat caries, yet most of them have better teeth.

[enigmaT120]

I've avoided dumping fluoride in my spring water, (has coliform bacteria instead!) but I rinse my teeth with fluoride rinses several times a week. And I avoid swallowing any of it.

[Lemon]

None. Although now I have lived in a hard-water area for so long going home to what used to be delicious soft water it is now decidedly less palatable.

If have never seen any need for a filter. All been treated to be safe, and I know my hot water supply is plumbed in a way the legionella ain't an issue.

[jennypenny]

The Crown Berkeys are 15% off today (9/20) with code prepared15, which is almost a $50 discount. I have the crown. I like that it's big enough for me to fill large pots when cooking. If you buy a bigger Berkey, I recommend the glass sight spigot so you know how much is in it.

[Sclass]

I used to buy my water at one of the filtration shops in a mini mall in Mountain View, CA. It was around $0.25 a gallon. Tasted great and was a lot cheaper than rigging a filter. The shop was run by a Korean lady who sold a lot of reverse osmosis systems she imported from Korea.

At the Korean food court in Santa Clara there are all these little table top filtration units that are fed by ice maker lines. THe water tastes great. I notice the South Koreans are really up on their water filtration. Does the water suck over there?

I also noticed while traveling in Maryland recently, the hotel ice maker had a cartridge filter on he back of it made in - you guessed it- Korea. It must be cultural.

Anyhow if I were to look into something beyond Brita, I'd head to Korea town and start asking questions. Have you noticed how Korean BBQs always have one of those water filtering machines with free cups and a bunch of brochures stuck to the side of it? And the water tastes great. And it's such an inside thing...they don't sell them to mainstream America like Samsung phones.

It's a good excuse to head down to Korea town for some short ribs.

Edit - I just got back from the Korean market in Irvine. While shopping for bulgogi sauce I saw the kiosk for Coway water filtration systems.

http://coway-usa.com/index.php?route=pr ... duct_id=58

The saleswoman gave me the rundown on it. She says Korean people (south?) don't drink tap water and won't drink bottled water. Really? Ok. Every home in Korea has some type of water filter. So she claimed it is like having a Mr. Coffee on the counter. It looks like a system costs $600 with annual filter swaps of $150 (five filters to replace). I looked at the rig and it looks like a ripoff. It goes inline with the plumbing and slowly filters into a 3 gal pressure tank. I mean, it looks like a good system and the flavor of the water was an improvement over tap, but $600 seemed like a lot to pay if $150 of it is filters.

The system looks like a GE whole house on steroids. More cartridges. Carbon, two sediment and two RO.

Seriously the five filters are just plumbed together in series with ice maker line and compression fittings. I'm tempted to buy her filters and just plumb them together with swagelok and put a little well tank on the side. That's pretty much what they sell. My water is pretty clean already so I'm not sure how often I'll need to change things. I bet if you put a cheap GE spun poly 5 micron up front you can save he expensive ones downstream.

I'm thinking of building it all into a milk crate like my biodiesel filter rig. T off my ice maker and put a little tap on the side of my fridge (I don't have a water dispenser).

I'm not going to spend $600 on this thing. It's too easy to build.

Edit 2 - oh man, I just typed in "reverse osmosis water filter system" on eBay and a whole bunch of systems came up. They look comparable for a small fraction of the price.

[Sclass]

I can use glass pitchers for storing cold water in the fridge. It limits the amount of time the water is in contact with plastic. Of course, it's still touching plastic as it's filtered, but the amount of time it touches plastic seems to be more important in how much/many chemicals are picked up from the plastic.

Agree to that Chad. When I bought my water from the filtering shop I invested in those big five gallon glass water cooler bottles. I had both plastic and glass and boy after a few days side by side, you can taste the difference. Something is leaching out of the plastic bottle.

Good five gallon glass cooler bottles can be bought from a brewing supply. I used to live next door to one but a mail order place like Williams has them.

[anomie]

Hello -

Looking at the Berkey and stumbled on a look alike type called ProPur that one video reviewer said tasted better for drinking water.

http://www.gopropur.com/

Anyone familiar with Propur? Prolly this one.

[anomie]

The "royal" and "big" berkeys are available in the scratch and dent section this morning. http://www.berkeyfilters.com/berkey-wat ... -and-dent/

Scratch and Dent Berkey link just saved me $30 on a Travel Berkey. Thank you JennyPenny.

beware: Berkey can not ship to Iowa or California. Those 2 states have extra regulations that Berkey found financially onerous to comply with. If living in one of those states, you have to order & ship to address outside of those states.