[shameus_o'reaaly]

No doubt a lot of posters will know about BPAs, heavy metal, estrogen contamination in tap and shower water, etc, but has anyone any verifiable knowledge or experience of home filtration ideas to remove or reduce the harmful content?

Silver or carbon filters are supposedly reliable for filtering dirty water, i.e. bacteria, but will they stop anti-androgens from getting into your glass or your morning cold shower?
If not, will anything else?

[jimukr104]

We boil our drinking water and run it though BRITA.

[Ensam]

An ion exchange resin water softener followed by an activated carbon filter should get rid of most things. If you're really paranoid tack a reverse osmosis filter on the tail end and you'll have super clean water. You might want to take some mineral supplements though because you'll be stripping out most of the calcium and magnesium in the process (which is good for filtration because they interfere with the effectiveness of the activated carbon).

[vinman]

I have a Berkey system for my condo, and a I have a Katadyne for camping. I also have Life Straws on hand just in case.
   
   
   

[obrero]

I've been considering getting the office-style watercooler thing in my place for drinking water. Does this type of bottled water contain all of the garbage that they put in municipal water?

[poledaddy]

Anyone have experience/knowledge of reverse osmosis filters?

I was told that they are superior to Brita-type filters in that it will get flouride and other additives out of the water, where as the Brita will not. But I'm of limited knowledge on the subject.

[Hypno]

I have a Sawyer for backpacking which is great as a back up in the grid goes down and the city doesn't have electricity to filter the water. Its basically a plastic bag that you use to collect water, and then gravity pushes it through a fist sized filter. There is a 0.1 model and a 0.0 model, the latter is a more thorough filter. Amazon's price was about half of REI's.

A book I recommend about filtering waster is called The Drinking Water Book by Colin Ingram. I bought this book because I wanted to learn how to filter flouride from my drinking water. I learned that there a lot of things besides flouride one should be woried about (for example, chlorine) and the type of filter you buy depends on what you are trying to remove. City water kills a lot of the bacteria and gets most of the heavy metals, but then they add stuff like chlorine and floride. If you are using well water there are other things you would worry about. This book explains it well and helps you to understand what your filter system can and cannot do. For example, some filters claim to filter get flouride but the reality is you need a pretty expensive set up (large volume charcoal filter tank) to do that job, so a lot of these claims regarding small, moderately priced filters are greatly exaggerated.

A lot of people like Berkeys, but there have been sporadic reports of them not working. Some good information here:

https://www.tfmetalsreport.com/forum/321...ter-issues

Other than that I don't have a view on how effective a Berkey is compared to other alternatives. They are certainly better than nothing, and they are widely used in the Third World, etc. People swear by them. I just don't know if they are getting everything so I don't offer an opinion one way or the other. One thing I will point out is that if you use city water, there is likely a lot of chlorine in it. You will absorb a lot of this through the skin and your lungs when you shower, so the Berkey is not useful for that.

[puckerman]

I own a Berkey and use it, but I will likely be getting rid of it soon. Too many times, I see the water leaking out. It's becoming annoying.

Does anyone know anything about this? It's called Aquatru. It looks pretty impressive.

https://www.aquatruwater.com/

[DerekJared]

We have RO filter parterned with water softener installed in our home.

[RatInTheWoods]

Dupe

[RatInTheWoods]

A cheap, easy to install under-sink filter like this:

[Kona]

I have a whole house system. RO and softener.

My house is at the shit end of the city water supply.

The big difference is the showers dontnget filthy. You don't get soap scum. I would install one on any new build if you are putting in fancy stone shows stuff.

Water tastes better too.

Aloha!