Santa Barbara City water tastes awful (not on a well). I have a Brita pitcher with a replaceable charcoal filter that makes the water taste good. Mostly it removes the chlorine but not particulates or any other bad things that could lurk in water.
A friend of mine is upgrading his kitchen to a very fancy under the counter RO system and he offered my his less fancy but still very nice countertop system. My research says that this is the best one you can buy and it retails for $400.
It has a particulate filter that removes grit, a charcoal filter akin to what I already have, a RO filter that removes elements like lead, fluoride (I know) and plastics, a UV light gizmo that kills microorganisms and a thingie that puts good minerals back in that the RO removes so it doesn’t taste terrible like regular RO water. All of this is what is alleged by the manufacturer.
It’s about the size of a big coffee maker and I have plenty of counter space. The filters last for a couple of years and aren’t expensive. It plugs into a regular electric socket.
I believe that it does what it claims to do. The question is, do I really need this contraption? Does anyone have experience with these things?
Have you had your water tested for lead, plastics and microorganisms? Maybe you don’t need that. And does your current Brita pitcher make your water taste “good” or even just nonoffensive? Have you ever visited your friend’s home and come away wondering, “Why does his water taste so much better than mine?”
In other words, what do you really think you’ll be getting with the new contraption?
If you don’t have particularly weak enamel (your dentist can tell you), see a dentist 2x/year, brush with a flouride toothpaste 2x/day and maybe add a flouride mouthwash on top of that to be extra safe, you should be perfectly fine on that front.
That said I don’t see the point unless your water genuinely sucks in ways other than taste or you can’t otherwise mitigate the taste. That is to say serious contaminants, something I sincerely doubt is the case in a prosperous city like Santa Barbara. Otherwise you’re just burning power to make it taste better, when a Brita filter is apparently doing a perfectly adequate job without the electricity use or taking up as much counter-space.
The main thing that an RO system handles that other water filter types don’t is total dissolved solids (TDS). Back in the distant past, I lived in Concord when the main water source was the Sacramento\San Joaquin delta. The tap water tasted noticeably salty, and an RO system was a totally worthwhile investment to make it drinkable.
According to the City of Santa Barbara Annual Water Quality Report TDS in surface water sources there averages 666 mg/l. Over 500 is considered high enough to impact water quality.
So, yes, I predict that you will appreciate having RO filtered water.
If he’s giving it away, it’s worth using it for a trial period. If it doesn’t beat the Brita, you can always pass it on to someone else that would appreciate it. Either way it will keep it out of a landfill.
As a fellow Santa Barbarian subject to the same miserable gravel tasting water: unequivocally yes. And the element that tips the balance for me is that remineralization cartridge. I have one as part of my under sink system that I installed and it takes the produced water from that kind of strange, flat taste of RO to something that’s a good approximation of spring water.
Not as good as Seattle still, but I no longer feel like I’m licking a damp rock. Even a Britta didn’t remove all of that taste for me.
If you were considering buying this system, I would definitely recommend an under the counter reverse osmosis system. You can get a reasonable five stage filtration system for around $200, and I believe it will work better than the pitcher type system. I have one that I’ve been using for over 10 years and it works great. However, since you’re being offered it for free, why not take it and try it out?
While I can’t answer your specific question, I agree with you about the horrible taste of tap water, which has never tasted good to me anywhere I’ve lived. Chlorine is probably part of the problem.
While my personal preference is bottled spring water – which is really cheap around here because we have, like, lots of springs! – I have no problem with filtered water that’s passed through a good filtration system.