Water filters - whole house vs drinking/cooking only

My system from Eco Serve is serviced every 3 mo.....

bulb changed when necessary... filters too

No muss, no fuss...all part of the contract

Treating water is quite an involved subject as I have found out on a current (large) resort project where we have been building a back of house extension with new seawater RO plant. We have experts and designers advising us and it is indeed complex getting good water quality and then drinking water quality with minerals.

For pH, distribution and to comply with WHO regulations, after first pass reverse osmosis treatment, some chemicals are added to the water - chlorine and calcium carbonate.

Now town water here will have the added chlorine, or at least it should, to elimante the bacteria. And because it is often coming from wells it will have dissolved solids of calcium carbonate natuarally and perhaps also disolved sodium chloride - salt.

If the town water has too low a TDS - total disolved solids - it will be out of balance and will aggressively seek to add back disolved solids by corroding the distribution system to make metal salts.

In the house concept therefore, what you will need to do at the point of drinking water is to remover the chlorine and any sediments and this is done using carbon (gets rid of chlorine) and fabric filters and you may want the additional security of UV light treatment.

If you do the whole house treatment you could be removing too many TDS's - total dissolved solids and some appliance corrosion etc could occur. I believe one poster wrote about such a problem and salinity was considered but it could also be lack of TDS. It could deend on what system you are using.

The iSpring systems do not sem to be too aggressive and provides good water for the home and has the note:

Please Note: Unlike an RO system, this system will NOT reduce Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), and instead keeps healthy minerals in your water. If you are interested in a filter that removes TDS consider our iSpring Reverse Osmosis (RO) systems.

You need about 300 mg/litre of TDS for balanced water which won't corrode and it appears the iSprng filters do not remove all the TDS - RO based units do remove the salt content and will achive up to 98% TDS removal depending on the RO membrane used.

This leads us back to the thread title and I am wondering if anybody with a full house treatment other than iSpring providing drinking quality water has any early wear and tear on plumbing appliances - metal appliances such as faucets, water tanks etc? It might be a deciding factor being that most of the small packaged drinking water units are aimed at the under sink/one tap application. I believe the iSpring is aiming at getting rid of sediment and chlorine rather than making the water good drinking quality.

So again the question  returns -  iS IT SAFE TO DRINK AND WAS IT TESTED?

Lennox I have no idea what all that was and I am still left with the same questions!

I have 'whole house'.... filters & UV.... water from a well

Water is 'hard' but a softener seems to complicated for me

Yes - we drink it
No - haven't noticed any wear & tear

Willie have you tested your water?

We plan to get the Ecoserve system. Several posters here have used this system with no ill health affects. The filters and UV seem to be a reliable option. Although not sure if anyone has actually tested the water.
Now, drinking from the tap again will be rather "weird" for us, having bottled water for so long.

Testing is part of the quarterly inspection..... I didn't ask the results

The equipment is 'Trojan' - NYC uses it

Let me add that my house of females had many problems before --NONE since

Thanks this is helpful!

planner wrote:

So again the question  returns -  iS IT SAFE TO DRINK AND WAS IT TESTED?

Lennox I have no idea what all that was and I am still left with the same questions!

Sorry if that was technical but it is not easy to get a good quality drinking water using  filtration and UV light treatment.

The water that is produced from either the filtration system suggested by Robbie 123 in post #40 or the Ecosystem Trojan appliance does not guarantee that you will removed many of the potential contaminents that can be found in the water supply from 'town water' or wells and that requires specialist testing for all the possible contaminants listed by the EPA. You will need reverse osmosis to lower the levels of many chemicals and metals such as lead, boron, copper manganese, arsenic, mercury, nitrates, pesticides, etc that can be found in water, sea water and well water.

I belive the Ecosystem Trojan and the cheaper and more filtered and sperate UV system described in post #40 can provide you with good house wide domestic water for showering, bathing, brushing teeth and perhaps for cooking (where you boil) purposes. It probably does meet certain drinking water standards. But personally I will continue to use RO treated 5 gallon bottled water for drinking and making fruit juices. That would be my recommendation and the cost of 5 gallon RO water is for me about 250 pesos a month so it is very small price to pay to have the water treated in a way the chemicals, metals and pesticides would be removed which filters alone do not do.

To be absolutely certain of your water you need to test thoroughly for all possible contaminants in accordance with EPA standards:

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files … esting.pdf

And a full test takes time in laboratory and is a few pages long listing contaminant, test type, limits, actual test findings and if the test is in, near or outside limits. In my project case mentioned in the earlier post on another island,  the local water company could not do the full chemical analysis test and the samples had to be sent to the USA. I would hope/expect DR has full testing capabilities and if so my recommendation is that you test your source water and after your chosen treatment too.

Thanks Lennox,  now I understand.  Sorry your other post was way over my head!  LOL

Ouch! Seems a bit much.

Lennox - that's certainly concerning. I have drank water that my daughter-in-law had in their rental house where they used a simple one filter system - I did'nt know this until after a visit or two - but it had no adverse effects (that I know of). In their new house they have larger three filter system and again, the water tastes fine. I have spoken with a company here in Canada and can courier water samples to them for testing and they'll email the results. The whole process to get that return email might take 10 to 14 days.....it'll be interesting to find out...great info and worth looking into!!

@LT American I'd like to hear more about this! How big is the unit?

@ddmcghee  of course, can you PM me ...or email. ***

@polo1club I have PDF files but I am unable to share my email address on this forum because the rules. Any ideas on how to share information

@LT American  - I will pm you for whatever info you have - sounds interesting.....

@polo1club Of course! I'll send info later today

@WillieWeb how much cost you system ?

You might consider getting a countertop water filter. It wouldn't purify your water from bacteria, but if you got a good one you'd be protected from pesticides and aluminum. I'd worry about pesticides in just about all of Latin America. Good luck and I hope you find a good one!

@WhereDoIGoNext Bacteria is a big concern here, so you have to have something that treats it, or buy bottled water.

@WhereDoIGoNext

Countertops do eliminate bacteria if they use the 'light'.  We have one (Watts under counter) we purchased from EcoServe. It also has the conventional 3 filters for sediment, flavor, etc.

@LT American

in regards to this post...

"I have a solar power unit that pulls humidity from the air, and filters it into pure drinking water. 6000 liters per day."

WOW!!!!

I think we would all want one of these!

Can you give us the product name and where you purchased, we can google to find more details.

Thank you,

Karin