Over the past 10 to 15 years we have seen a huge shift in the way people drink water. Most people drink mainly bottled water or filtered water from the fridge. If you are buying bottled water as your main source of drinking water you are overpaying for water by thousands of dollars per year. The Water Quality Association www.wqa.org estimated that in 2011 the average cost per gallon of bottled water was $1.21 per gallon. That price is very conservative, but we will use that price for demonstration purposes. At BEST Plumbing we install the Aqua Pure 3MFF100 full flow drinking system. This filters out Chlorine, Odor, Particulate, Lead, VOC’s and Cryptosporidium Cysts. This filter will remove particulate (or Total Dissolved Solids) down to .2 microns and will give you cleaner drinking water than almost every bottled water on the market. This filter is good for approximately 6,000 gallons of water and we install this system for $490. That equals about 8 cents per gallon verses $1.21 per gallon. If you do the math, you are paying over $7,260 for the same amount of bottled water. The worst part of this is that the quality of the water you can get from your tap with this filter is better than the bottled water. Keep in mind too that the $490 price is just for the initial install of the Aqua Pure system. You replace the filters every 6 – 12 months and the cost of the replacement filters is only $210 which brings the cost per gallon down to 4 cents per gallon. Quite a big difference.
We recently had the Aqua Pure guys in the office for some training and we did a test on the unfiltered tap water from the faucet at our office. The water tested out at 200 parts per million of particulate straight out of the kitchen faucet. We then tested a name brand bottled water and it tested out 191 parts per million of particulate. We then installed the Aqua Pure 3MFF100 filter system on the faucet and tested that water. After filtration it tested out at 22 parts per million of particulate. Huge difference! The most eye opening thing was that the bottled water tested out at about the same as water straight from the tap. The Aqua Pure guys were not surprised, they told us they see that all the time.
So…what is the particulate in the water? Well it is several things, but in simple terms the particulate is the dead parts of all the bacteria and microbes that are killed off during the water treatment process from the city. The drinking water is treated by the city or local water facility before it is dispersed into the local water system. It is ran through U.V. light and chlorine and quite a few other things are introduced into the water to kill all the microbes and bacteria that are in the water that would make us sick. Once these things are killed, their “bodies” remain suspended in the water. These are called “Dissolved Solids” or particulate. As the water travels from the treatment plant to your faucet it passes through a very antiquated system of pipes. These pipes are a mix of ductile iron, steel, lead, galvanized, copper, and plastic. As the water passes through these pipes it picks up more particulate and contaminant. Sometimes these pipes are compromised and you see the reports on the news for a “Boil Water Advisory”. These are issued for homeowners when contamination of the water supply occurs after the treatment plant and the water has to be boiled to kill off the microbes and bacteria suspended in the water.
If you have questions about water quality and your treatment and filtration options please Make the BEST Choice and Call BEST Plumbing today at (513) 342-0323 and we will have one of our licensed plumbers come out to your home to go over your options. Below are a couple of links to more information.
Water Quality Association www.wqa.orgAqua-Pure Water Filtration www.aquapure.com
