You can not determine treatment method until you know what you are treating. RO units do work great but if the incoming water quality is not within the RO units perimeters you’ll just destroy an RO unit.
As Lumpy is on a municipal supply he can get a copy of water quality reports at no cost to him. That should be the first step.
For any of you that have RO units when is the last time you sanitized them? I used to service RO units, as a result of this I never drink RO water unless I know the person keeps up on maintenance. RO membranes are a breading ground for bacteria unchecked.
I would suggest a sink one over a whole house unit if it’s only for taste for two reasons. 1)If taste is the only issue, there’s little point in paying all that money for cartridges just to have better tasting water in your shower and toilet and to water your lawn* or clean your dishes with and, basically, why clean 40 gallons of water a day to drink a few cups. 2)Years ago, I had something funky going on with with my plumbing. Some pink and black mold hanging off some of my faucets. When I called the city water person, during the conversation, I asked about a whole house filter. He said that he’s not only quite sure it’s originating in my house, but a whole house filter may/would remove the chlorine and the mold/bacteria could really take off. So that’s another reason, again, if it’s just about taste, the OP may only want to consider removing the bad taste from one tap.
A brita was actually my first thought. I had one for years and loved it. I’m not sure about the pricing, currently on the Brita or any of the other systems mentioned here, but a big plus with the Brita is that you can keep it in your fridge so the water is always cold as well.
Regarding the filter, you can probably use it more than once, I always did. Even with my current filter (inline, in the fridge), I just leave it in until the water starts to taste funny, then replace it. I’m supposed to replace it every 6 months. I usually go 1-2 years.
As for you airing out your water, sounds like that works for you. But if you ever find that you want to speed it up, I think, IIRC, you can get a fish tank air pump with an airstone and that might get the chlorine out in an hour or two instead of a day.
Funnily, I wanted to check that, since I remember it from when I started my fish tank. While I was right, it seems that, based on what I’m reading many/most water supplies use Chloramide which doesn’t evaporate out…the funny thing is where I’m reading this. Seems it’s a big deal in the pot growing community.
*ETA, that reminds me, I remember when I was looking into a whole house filter, many people mentioned, when plumbing it in, it’s a good idea to have your outdoor spigots bypass it, for just that reason. Assuming you do need to clean all the water in your house, you probably still don’t need to clean water for your grass. Or, at least, plumb in some valves to bypass the filter, so you can go around it when doing things like watering the grass, but turn still use filtered water for things like washing your car.
I’ve used the same old Brita pitcher for at least 17 years. Of course I change the filter every month or so. I also have a rule in my family- if you’re the last person to use up the last bit of water in the pitcher, you have to take it apart, set the filter aside, clean the pitcher/ lid, put it back together, and fill it up again. We keep it in the fridge, too, so the water’s always nice and cool.
Yes. Fortunately, we’re on surface well/septic, so wastewater tends to go right back into the aquifer. But for deep water/sewer areas, it’s something worth thinking about - filtering a static pitcher or non-wasteful filtering is probably a good investment.
Just the open air decanting does a good enough job that if I’m not careful to keep the pitcher out of sunlight I will get algae; same goes for the 72 hour emergency water I’ve filtered and stored if it gets moved to a sunny area for any length of time (Utah’s got potential for earthquakes so we’re recommended to have the water set aside). I was glad to have it on hand when the city’s water supply got messed up for a week awhile back and the boil notice didn’t go out until 2-3 days after E. coli was first detected. My drinking water was still safe and I had backup for cooking as well.