Choosing the Best Drinking Water Filter for Your Home

The importance of clean water is all over the news these days. With old infrastructure, groundwater contamination, and other concerns about water quality, more and more households are turning to filter pitchers and bottled water to avoid drinking their tap water.

Here at efilters, we are dedicated to helping families find the best drinking water filter for their homes. We carry a deliberately small number of brands, and we recommend Everpure systems for homes because of their ease of installation and use. Adding one of these systems to your home will allow your family to have access to clean drinking water anytime on tap.

Lead, mercury, and other contaminants can find their way into drinking water so filtering your way is an extra layer of protection against drinking potentially harmful water.

Many households have turned to pitcher filters to meet their filtered water needs. These pitchers have experienced a boom in popularity, but they are not an ideal solution for providing filtered water. The main drawback is their capacity. These filters tend to hold between half a gallon to a gallon of water. With an average household consuming almost 2 gallons of water a day, the 40 gallon capacity on these filters means they must be refilled up to 4 times daily and the filter needs to be replaced every 20 days. Not only do these pitchers take up space in your fridge, but they also require regular filter changes to remain effective and they produce significant waste in the form of spent filters.

There are several types of home filtration systems to consider instead of a filtered pitcher. The two main systems for home use are standard water filters and reverse osmosis filters. A standard water filter uses one or more filter cartridges designed to remove leads, chemicals and other particulate from your water. Reverse osmosis systems typically use at least two stages of filtration. First water passes through a carbon filter then it is pushed through a semi-permeable membrane.

This membrane traps chemicals and incredibly small particles but allows water through, similar to the wall of a cell. The filter before the membrane keeps it from clogging quickly, allowing reverse osmosis systems like the ROMII to deliver extremely pure water for up to three years (as long as the prefilter is changed occasionally).

The main mechanism in most water filters is activated carbon. This substance is useful for filtration because it has an incredibly large surface area. Four grams of activated carbon, which would fit in your palm, have as much surface area as an average city block. This incredible amount of surface area allows activated carbon to absorb a huge amount of contaminants.

One major consideration in choosing the best drinking water filter system is the tap. Some systems will require you to add an additional faucet to your countertop, while others will hook into your existing system. If your system requires a dedicated tap, you may need to add a hole to your countertop. The difficulty of this task depends on the material that makes up your counters. You can avoid this by purchasing a different system, like the Everpure PBS-400, which plumbs directly on the cold water side of your existing kitchen faucet.

No matter which system is the best drinking water filter for you, the ease of installation will be shocking. All of the systems we offer can be installed directly under your sink, even if you are not mechanically inclined. Most of these systems require only two screws to be installed to mount the filter head. The rest of the installation process is as simple as attaching hoses, twisting on the filter, and patting yourself on the back for a job well done.

Once your system is installed, the maintenance is simple. Depending on the system, your filter will last a certain number of gallons per cartridge. The best way to know if your filter needs to be replaced is by noting the decreased flow through the faucet. Replacing the filter is as simple as replacing a lightbulb, with the added step of flipping a shutoff valve. When you replace a filter on one of the home Everpure systems we offer at efilters, you can recycle your used filters.

Don’t risk drinking contaminated tap water or deal with bulky water filter pitchers. Browse efilters today and find a home filtration system that will provide your home with clean drinking water fresh from the tap. Our team of filtration experts knows the ins and outs of Everpure’s home systems and we can help you find the best drinking water filter for your home.