Water filter in kitchen

[dlminehart]

San Jose has lousy water. While San Francisco and Oakland get most of theirs from a mountain valley next to Yosemite, ours is largely from local wells. Is this how silicon tastes?

Anyway, I want to put in a filter on our kitchen cold water supply to the sink to provide good tasting water for cooking and drinking. My sink has a spare faucet or soap dispenser outlet, so I could add a little tap there and run a branch to it off the incoming cold water line. Alternatively, since we use the hot water for dishwashing and other cleaning, I could just put the filter in the line going to the existing cold water faucet. We'd "waste" some filtering capability on washing off fruits and veggies, but it would save having to spend time and particularly money on another faucet, which would be left for our landlord when we moved.

Anyone care to comment on whether the separate filtered tap is worth it?

[chopnhack]

I guess to some extent that would depend on the capacity and type of water filter we are talking about. For instance, a reverse osmosis water filter will take out just about everything but will have a much lower flow rate and you would have to put in a separate (mini) faucet. These units produce excellent quality water, the only downfalls are the backwashing of the membrane that most units do and the low flow rate. On a simple carbon filter you could run it on your existing setup without much worry.

[pierhogunn2]

www.vitasalus.com has great water filters, I put on the whole-house flouride master, and now all of my water is excellent, no matter what sink I draw from, or shower in
they replaced it with the wholehouse puremaster.

they are spendy, but they are great, we had our water tested by an independent lab, and there was litteraly nothing in there, everything was well below acceptable limits, or not detectable.

Makes me smile a little when the city sends us the 2X or more a year letter saying that something is in the water, but the epa says its okay...

just put it in line right after your house input and you won't be sorry

I can run 2 showers, and the dishwasher at the same time with no problems

[Tom Slick]

I have a seperate filter/tap in the kitchen just for taste. It's a dual unit with one charcoal and one particulate filter. works good but but as good an an RO unit.

[Jim Frye]

Seperate Water Filter...

Even though our city has great water (comes from Lake Erie), sometimes it can have a rather strong chlorine taste. Quite a few years ago, I installed a separate water filter and fountain for the Kitchen sink. I chose an Omnifilter brand as the cartridges were easy to purchase locally. The unit I put in has two cartridges. One is a spun fabric filter for debris and particulates and the second filter is a charcoal filter for impurities and chemicals. It will strip the chlorine and flourine from the water. I installed a separate fountain on the sink using a 1/2" hole drilled in the sink next to the faucet. I put the filter unit in the basement under the kitchen sink area. This makes it easier to change filters which occurs about every 18 months. I test the output for chlorine with a swimming pool test kit and when I start seeing a bit of chlorine coming through, I know it is time to go get new filters. I also put a "T" fitting in the outlet line from the filter and ran one leg to the ice maker in the fridge. At the time our fridge didn't have its own filter cartrdge and this made the cubes taste a lot better (actually they didn't have any taste then).

[Salty]

Mine is the Filtrete model 3US-AS01. We also have city water that usually has some descernable taste or odor.
I was not concerned about filtering solids so I went with this one on the cold side of the faucet. The boss wanted to keep the sprayer and I was not keen on cutting another hole in the SS sink. After about 7 or 8 months I put in a new filter, even though there was no taste or odor getting through.
Installation was easy, seemed too easy at the time and I was constantly checking for leaks. Filter change is also a snap.
We buy a lot fewer bottles of water now. We keep some around because we just don't feel right handing company a refilled bottle.

[dlminehart]

Did the deed

I installed a Culligan filter on the cold water line to the kitchen sink. Took a bit of doing, because my under-sink connectors didn't match those of the filter. Local hardware store had adapters for about $5. It's working fine. Nice to be able to run a drinkable glass of water!

[phi1l]

I just browsed the San Jose annual water quality report. It looks like you T&O problems are probably from iron & manganese. The first thing I would do is get one of those charcoal filter pitchers & check to see if charcoal will do the job for you. If that does the job then you can get an under-the-counter filter & a separate drinking water faucet. If not you are looking at ion exchange or RO.

I notice that your hardness is moderatly high as well, so I would expect that the landlord would have softener to protect the hot water heater. That system may not be operating correctly, you may want to check on that if you notice odor in the hot water.

[dbhost]

With all the petrochemicals leeching into the water table around here, combined with the high cancer rates the Houston Metro area has, I wasn't taking ANY chances. Three years ago we has a whole house Reverse Osmosis System installed. It has made a HUGE difference health wise. If you do go with an RO system, it will strip everything but the water out of the water, chlorine, calcium, and flouride included. You may want to either make sure you drink a lot of milk, or take suppliments.

[capncarl]

In my previous house I installed a filter set up under the sink in the cabinet. I will not ever do anything that stupid again. After replacing it with every brand locally available I finally removed it. You can not keep this junk from leaking. After changing a filter and putting everything back together carefully it will leak somewhere. Sometimes it would quit leaking after tightening it a bit, somethimes it would require taking apart and putting back together. If you tighten the filter housing too much it will leak too. I hate them. Then you have to pull all of the kitchen junk from under the sink cabinet every time you need to service the filter. I also enjoyed explaining why everything under the sink was wet after something decided to leak. In my current house I installed a whole house filter in the garage. I have good access to it, nothing would get hurt if it leaks, and it seldom leaks, go figure.
Putting a filter in the kitchen sink cabinet, don't do it!

capncarl

[toolguy1000]

this has been in my kitchen sink cabinet for 5 years, never leaked once:

http://products.geappliances.com/App...&Sku=GNSV70FBL

the easiest way to do anything is to use reliable products the first time and skip the shortcuts.

[charliex]

My 2 cents worth. We use and I can recommended a RO system for drinking and cooking. If you have a way of mounting any system in the basement under the kitchen, go for it. In my home in Hopkins I built a nice cabinet and attached it to the wall. Made changing the filters a snap and I could stand and change them instead of crawling around on the floor. Here I don't have a basement so.... A big difference is I only have to change filters once a year, in Hopkins it was every 3 months.

Chas

[thestinker]

We put in a second small tap with a single cartridge filter. Homedepot sells them. No complaints with install or performance. We've had outs about 5 years now.