How to Choose a Home Water Purification System

Whether you have city or well water, you may want to take steps to ensure its quality for you and your family. Now that you've decided to install some kind of filtration system, you might be wondering what kind you should invest in. How large should it even be? In this article we'll show you what you should consider when shopping for a home water filter system.

Whole Home or Drinking Water Only?

Depending on the water quality coming into your home, you may opt for either a whole house filtration system, or simply one that you install to your kitchen sink so that your drinking water is purer. If you already have a softener system installed and are happy with the water quality for showers, sinks, and mundane tasks, then you may only need a drinking water system.

Point of Use (POU): A water filter that installs under the sink or at the kitchen faucet is known as a "Point of Use" or POU system. This filters only the water coming from one source, usually the kitchen sink, to use for drinking and cooking.

Point of Entry (POE): A filtration system that affects all the water on your home is known as a "Point of Entry" or POE system. This installs where the water enters your home and affects all the water you use in your house.

What Is Your Typical Daily Water Demand?

The type of system you should choose will depend upon what water filtration capacity you need. A larger household with a greater demand for clean water will require a larger system to keep pace.

There are two ways to determine your general water usage: 

1. The number of bathrooms in your house is a good metric by which to judge whole-home water use when considering POE systems. Consider how often your family flushes the toilets and often they shower, and whether that water needs to be filtered. While most toilets don't need filtered water, but filtered water is great for skin and hair and is even great for dishes and washing your car or vehicle. Think about the number of faucets and appliances that need fresh water because if it's more than 2-3 you'll probably need a whole house POE system. 
2. How many people will be drinking and cooking with the water coming from your faucet? This can help you judge daily water filtration needs for a single Point of Use system, such as an under-sink reverse osmosis system. If you're only looking for drinking water out of a single tap or you have 1-2 showers that could use some filtered water you're going to want a POU filter. 

What are You Trying to Remove?

Depending on where your water is coming from, you'll need to approach your filtration a specific way. You don't want to over-do your filtration and leave your 

If you have water supplied by a city municipality, there will most likely be chlorine, fluoride, and other chemical or heavy metal contaminants from the water treatment, the source water, and the pipes carrying the water to your house.

The EPA only regulates less than 100 possible water contaminants. Municipalities are required to report water quality measurements annually and make them available in a Consumer Confidence Report (CRR). And while the EPA states that there is “no safe level of lead for drinking water”, it still allows up to 15ppb before taking enforceable action. Clearly, passing inspection at the treatment plant doesn’t mean it is the best water you or your family can have.

If your water comes from a well it won’t have chlorine in it, but it could have bacterial contamination with E. Coli and Salmonella, pesticide and fertilizer runoff, heavy metal and fluoride contamination from groundwater or mineral seepage underground. Many wells produce water high in rust, calcium, and silt. If your well is prone to a lot of sediments, you may want to install a whole-home softener system, with a POU reverse osmosis system for your drinking water. Remember, hard water is more difficult for a reverse osmosis system to filter, and it will last longer if the water it purifies is first softened.

A good place to start is to test your water to get an idea of what kind of contaminants your water may contain, and at what levels. This will help your decide if you need a Point of Use system, a Point of Entry system, or both. 

How to Remove Contaminants from Your Water

Once you have a better understanding of your water filtration and usage needs it’s time to start figuring out what sort of filters you need to remove the imperfections of your water.

For well water with microorganisms, systems with UV filters are helpful at making typically unsafe water safe to drink.

For municipal water sources with heavy metals, salts, and chlorine, you’ll want to use a system with a carbon filter and a reverse osmosis membrane.

For filtered water lacking essential minerals, running your water through an alkaline filter will help introduce healthy minerals and oxygenate your water to bring it back to life without the harsh treatments of the city.

So come see us, the water experts at Nu Aqua! Whether you’re looking for reverse osmosis systems, countertop filters, or shower filters, we have you covered. With our proprietary HydraCoil™ Technology, our filters offer superior performance and remove over 300 contaminants and chemicals from your water.