Finding The Best Home Water Purification System

Clean drinking water is a valuable resource that most people take for granted. If you ever experience foul tasting or cloudy drinking water, adding a home water purification system can help you achieve increíble water quality. Water quality can change daily and, unless you test your water every day, it’s basically impossible to know what is in the water you are drinking. That’s why having the best home water purification system possible in your home is essential to ensure your water is going to be safe to drink.

A lot can happen between your local water treatment facility and your sink. Many heavy metal contaminants are encountered during this journey, especially in areas with historic plumbing. The leaching of lead and other metals has been shown to cause health issues and properly rated filters can greatly reduce these levels in drinking water.

Some chemical contaminants can also cause turbidity and foul odors in your water. This is typically caused by organic compounds leaching into your water from one of several potential sources. Home water filtration helps to create an extra layer of protection against having these chemicals present in your drinking water.

But chemical contaminants like heavy metals are not the only issue, there are also biological water contaminants. Giardiasis is one of the most common waterborne ailments in the United States. This disease is caused by a small parasite called giardia. Properly rated water filters are able to remove parasitic cysts, viruses, and bacteria from your water.

Despite all of these potential sources of contamination, many home filtration systems are wholly insufficient. This is because many systems focus on offering a small amount of water quality improvement instead of being designed to offer the best water quality possible. Instead, many filtration companies are focused on creating filters with intentionally short lifespans so users will have to purchase frequent replacements.

Let’s consider the most common home filtration option, your standard filtered water pitcher. Each of these pitchers is designed to fit a small carbon media filter cartridge that will offer some improvement to water quality. One of the largest drawbacks to these systems is the fact that they are gravity fed instead of operating under pressure. This means that the filter media has to remain loosely packed in order to function properly. It also reduces the level of filtration that the system is capable of performing.

In addition to these issues with their design and performance, filtered pitchers also have huge maintenance requirements. You cannot enjoy filtered water without refilling the pitcher and giving it time to complete its gravity fed filtration. Once this is complete, you only have as much filtered water as the pitcher can hold before you will have to refill the pitcher again.

Another popular option for homeowners is the faucet mounted filter. These devices are directly attached to the end of your faucet and typically feature a switch that determines whether your faucet diverts water to this filter. These systems have a slightly longer lifespan than a pitcher, but they add a permanent and often unsightly piece of hardware to your existing faucet. The filtration levels offered by their filters is typically better than a pitcher, but far from being the best home water purification system.

Instead of using one of these filters, we believe that homeowners can greatly increase their water quality and maintenance schedule by using a dedicated filtration system. Unlike the common filtered pitchers and faucet filters, these systems are designed to mount under your kitchen sink. This means that you can achieve incredible water quality without sacrificing valuable space in your kitchen or refrigerator.

Here at efilters, we are proud to offer Everpure water filtration systems. These home filtration systems offer what we believe to be the perfect balance between incredible water quality and extreme ease of use. Your Everpure system will dispense freshly filtered water 24/7 and they typically only require annual maintenance. Because of the design of their Everpure water filter cartridges, these systems can filter hundreds if not thousands of gallons of drinking water.

When attempting to choose the best home water purification system, you will have to consider a wide range of options. One of the first concerns for many homeowners is how their new filter will affect the layout of their kitchens. Most under sink water filtration systems dispense their drinking water via a small dedicated water faucet. This will mean creating a hole in your sink or countertop to install this new faucet. Luckily, drinking water faucets have become quite common and there are a wide range of options to suit any kitchen.

If you do not want to deal with adding a hole to your sink or counter, there are Everpure systems that do not require them. You will see under our Drinking Water drop down menu, there is a section for “Full Flow Systems and Cartridges.” Instead of requiring a dedicated faucet, these systems dispense their drinking water using the cold water side of your existing faucet.

No matter what type of system you choose, they all rely on Everpure’s filter cartridges. These metal cartridges feature a protective liner that keeps your water from contacting the metal surface as well as a bacteriostatic element to prevent the multiplication of capturing bacteria within the cartridge over time. Both of these features help to ensure that nothing inside of the filter cartridge can cause any negative effects on your final water quality.

The actual filtration is completed using Everpure’s Micro-PureⓇ filter media. The primary ingredient in this filter media, and most other filtration brands, is activated carbon. This amazing substance is basically a specially treated form of charcoal that has a massive area. On a microscopic scale, every tiny grain of activated carbon is a tiny sponge that is ready to absorb passing contaminants.

Activated carbon is basically a miracle material when it comes to filtration. Two grams of activated carbon has more total surface area than an entire regulation football field. A small handful of the stuff has more surface area than your average city block! With this huge surface area, the inside of every Everpure cartridge has nearly a square mile of surface ready to absorb your water’s contaminants.

There are two different styles of Everpure filter cartridges. The difference is determined by the layout of the filter media inside the cartridge. Filters under the “H” series are designed with a pleated internal filter membrane that helps to increase water flow and internal surface area. Other Everpure cartridges use an internal carbon block to get the largest amount of carbon possible. These cartridges can typically handle large amounts of water, but both designs offer the same level of filtration.

When you use an Everpure system in your home, you are going to get water that has been filtered to remove particles as small as 0.5 microns across. To give a concept of this miniscule size, a human hair is about 50 microns wide. That means that an Everpure filter cartridge can remove particles that are 100 times smaller than the width of a piece of hair.

In addition to standard Everpure systems, we also offer home reverse osmosis filters. These are the best home water purification systems in terms of their ability to remove contaminants. If you thought the 0.5 micron rating from Everpure’s standard systems was impressive, then reverse osmosis will amaze you. Our Everpure ROM III and ROM IV systems can filter water down to 0.00001 microns. This is fine enough to remove almost all contaminants from your water.

Instead of relying on aggregate media like carbon, these filters operate using a specialized filter membrane within the cartridge. This membrane contains incredibly small holes, mimicking the effects of osmosis across the cell walls in living things. Osmosis is a natural process where water, or another solvent, moves across a membrane to achieve solute balance.

To put it simply, osmosis is a natural process aimed at achieving equilibrium on both sides of a thin membrane. If one side contains salt water and the other side contains fresh water, the fresh water will flow towards the salty side to try to achieve equilibrium. Alternatively, if both sides have salt water, but one side is more concentrated, water will flow towards the more concentrated side to dilute it until both sides have an equal concentration of salt. Now that you understand this process, you are probably wondering what it has to do with water filtration.

Osmosis occurs naturally, but with a little pressure, we can force the process to occur in reverse, creating a reverse osmosis filter. Basically, if one side of the membrane contains water with dissolved solids, you can apply pressure to that side of the membrane and force the water through. Eventually this will leave you with a small amount of water containing the dissolved solids, and purified water on the opposite side of the membrane.

Once this process is completed, the small amount of water holding the waste products goes down the drain, and the freshly filtered water is piped to a storage tank until it is needed. This method of filtration is extremely effective, but can be slower than a standard filter. The storage tank ensures that you will always have gallons of filtered water ready to use when you need it.

Because the membranes used in these filtration systems are delicate, there is a prefilter cartridge that removes large particles that might clog the membrane as well as chlorine, which can damage the membrane. These prefilter cartridges operate in a similar fashion to a standard Everpure filter. These systems also feature a third stage of filtration that is aimed at removing any tiny volatile organic compounds that are small enough to make it through the reverse osmosis membrane.

Reverse osmosis systems obviously have more components and take up more space than a standard filter. They are still designed to fit under your kitchen sink, but they will need a little more space to accommodate the storage tank and the triple filter head used by both of our residential reverse osmosis systems.

Luckily, both of these systems require minimal maintenance. A standard Everpure system will typically only require a yearly cartridge replacement, while the reverse osmosis cartridges can last 2 to 3 years, though the prefilter will have to be changed annually. All filters come with a convenient indicator, which will start out white and slowly turn red. When the indicator reaches solid red, it is time for a change.

The process of changing these filters is as simple and quick as changing a lightbulb. Simply flip the shutoff valve, unscrew the old cartridge, screw the new one securely into place, and reopen the valve. Once this is complete, you can continue to enjoy freshly filtered water for another year. If you notice that the rate of water flow from your system is slowing down, this may be a sign that it is time to change your filter cartridge.

You can also install these systems without the need for professional help. All you need is some time and a few basic hand tools. Obviously the RO systems will require a few additional steps, as they need to drain waste water, but the process is still remarkably simple. The design of our Everpure systems is centered around being efficient and easy to use in every aspect.

So if you are looking for the best home water purification system, we have plenty of options to choose from. This includes both standard and reverse osmosis filtration systems designed for your home. You can find these products and much more in our store here at efilters. If you have any questions about one of our filters or you need help deciding which is the best fit for your home, you can always contact a member of our team for help. Please send an email to info@efilters.net.