Before buying a home water purifier, you should understand them. Purifiers are devices that will filter contaminants out of your tap water supply so you can drink pure, unadulterated water. When you compare home water purifiers, you’ll quickly discover that there is a great variety of difference between the types, both in how they look and function and in what contaminants they filter out of your water. You should always purchase the one that works best for you.
When you compare home water purifiers, start by looking at how they work: do they attach to your faucet or do you use them in a special pitcher? A few home water purifiers even attach to the main line of your home, but these are not common. In each case, you should consider how you need to use your home water filter: drinking only, or cooking as well? Do you want refrigerated water anyway? Do you need exceptionally easy-to-use filters? In some cases, you can even find home water purifiers that do special things, like add flavor to your water.
Compare home water purifiers by their action on your water first. You’ll quickly see that each type of filter uses a different action. The activated carbon filter is the usual choice for regular home use, but the reverse osmosis is also popular for a more involved water purification system. In addition, some areas use the KDF-55 or the greensand iron filter. Another water purification method, the ultraviolet filter, is rarely found for household use. In general, you’ll find that the activated carbon and reverse osmosis filters are the most common home use filters by far. These two filters have very different actions on your water supply.
The most common is the activated carbon purification system. In this filter type, the extreme natural reactivity of carbon to most natural chemicals is the method used to eliminate contaminants in water. Because of the way water dissolves things, each contaminant has a slight negative charge, while activated carbon has a slight positive one. Positive carbon reacts with negative contaminants much the same way the different polarities of a magnet work, and impurities are attracted to and held by the carbon until most of the positive carbon charge is used up. This makes it a very effective purifier. The two primary types of carbon used in filters are the granular activated carbon (GAC) and powdered block carbon, with the powdered block being slightly more effective overall. Both types of activated carbon remove chlorine, radon, pesticides and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs), sediments, bad tastes, and a portion of hydrogen sulfide and some heavy metals.
Reverse osmosis home water purifiers are much better purifiers, but they are also much slower and more difficult to use. They use the concept of an osmotic barrier - a thin membrane through which water can pass but contaminants may not. While activated carbon home water purifiers are typically attached to the water supply, reverse osmosis filters are used in a more passive system, such as a pitcher or water reservoir. If you have reverse osmosis water purification systems delivering water to your tap, you have a purification system attached to a reservoir, and the water is first run through an activated carbon filter and then through the osmotic system. Reverse osmosis removes different contaminants, such as arsenic, bacteria, viruses, chlorine, fluoride, heavy metals, nitrates, bad tastes and smells, sediments, iron, and some VOCs and hydrogen sulfide.
Never install a home water purification system unless you’ve checked the installation price, when and how you use your water filter, and what impurities you really need removed from your water. Once you determine this, you can start to enjoy clean pure water out of your own tap.
