Under-counter water filters

JRoll - March 19, 2021

AdviceGear

Hi All,

I’ve been researching under-counter water filters after seeing an ad for Hydroviv. I found several articles on other prepping sites that recommend Epic Smart Shield over the Hydroviv. I’m curious if any folks here have experience with either of these filters and could provide some insight? I’m also open to other filter brands if you have recommendations. 

Background: I live in the Southeast and am on city water. 

Thanks!

6  

1. Probably not needed unless there are known impurities in your water….Do you get an analysis of your water from the water company?

 

Hey JRoll, Thank you for a bit of your background on where you live, but would you be able to share a bit more about why you want an under-counter water filter? That’ll probably help us to give you better recommendations according to why you want it.

My wife wants to get a good water filter because water is the most common and important thing that we put into our body everyday. And while our organs are incredible filters, she would rather not put unnecessary things into our bodies in the first place. So she is coming at it from a health perspective.

There’s the prepping perspective that you want to be more in control of your water and not have to rely on the grid to balance everything for you. Things happen, like a cracked water line that would seep in contaminates from the outside, or the water treatment plant changing their ratios, or even that water treatment plant getting hacked like the prepared talked about recently. Although from their article, no filter could have protected people from that concentration of lye from the hack though.

Once I know a bit more about what you want to protect yourself from, then I can maybe help give a better recommendation.

Whatever one you do end up getting, make sure they are an established and reputable company. You don’t want to invest in installing one of these and then in a year they go out of business and you can’t get replacement filters. When selecting a brand to go with, take in consideration the filter replacement cost and frequency. If one filter will last 10,000 gallons and another will only do 8,000 but they cost the same, the 10,000 one might be a better purchase. (really not sure if those are reasonable filtration amounts).  I would also buy one-three extra filters if your budget permits. That’ll give you constant fresh water if one fails so you don’t have to wait for shipping of another to come in before you can start drinking again.

Remember up above I talked about my wife wanting one for health reasons? She has her eyes set on one by the brand PristineHydro. I haven’t looked into it myself to vouch for it or not, but from looking at the website for two seconds it looks like it is a series of filters that aim to give you the absolute best water possible. Instead of just a reverse osmosis filter, it also has like an ionizer, carbon filter, and remineralizer. Their website says that each type of filter has it’s pros and cons. For example the reverse osmosis portion will remove most contaminants except acids like from acid rain or other chemicals, and the ionizer will remove the acid, the carbon will make it taste better, and all these steps will remove important minerals from your water, so there is the remineralization stage to put minerals back into your water. I’m probably not doing it justice, because she had only mentioned it once to me and I haven’t looked into it, but that system is supposed to be pretty good, but very expensive.

 

@RobertLarson Thanks for the reply I’m interested in one to remove chlorine and other contaminants from the water. Once a year, our local water supply performs its water treatment disinfection changeover process, which takes about six weeks to complete. This process is required by federal and state regulations, and is typically performed each year during the spring and involves temporarily stopping the use of ammonia in the water treatment process. The temporary switch to chlorine-only disinfection serves as a precautionary measure to ensure the entire water distribution system is appropriately maintained, but the result is that our water has a very strong chlorine taste, which is off-putting.

More importantly, I also want to add a filter to protect against Lead, PFOAs, TTHMs, Bromodichloromethane, Atrazine, Benzene, Xylenes, Bacteria (E. coli), Glyphosate (Roundup), Mercury, etc., especially after what occurred in Detroit’s water. 

I don’t want to install a full house system due to the high installation and maintenance costs, so the relatively low cost of under the counter filter is what attracts me.  Does that help?

 

Thanks for the further explanation. I think the two filters you listed would be great as they claim to filter the things you are worried about. They aren’t overly expensive, easy to install, and have low maintenance costs like you said.

I totally understand where you are coming from with wanting to filter out the chlorine during that changeover process. I lived in a third world country for a few months and the tap water, I’m not joking here, was probably 25% chlorine. It tasted like I was drinking bleach. I couldn’t stand it and ended up walking a couple miles every week with these jugs to fill up on some filtered water from the place I was working.

I think you should get your water examined like hikermor said, more out of curiosity and to back up your thoughts of trying to filter out this stuff. But from what you said, I think you are safe to buy a filter without a test because you already know they are putting stuff in your water you don’t want.

Bill mentions an over-counter water filter. I have one like that and love it. It’s a great preparedness item and I recommend you get one too. But I also understand where you are coming from and just want some cleaner water coming out of your tap. The one benefit to the over-counter one is that you could gather water from other sources and filter it through that, where as your under-counter water filter will only do stuff coming in through the pipes. Make sure you have a good water filter for an emergency.

 

They are OK so long as the water mains supply lasts,  I realised that in many scenarios that if electricty goes off so does the water and domestic gas  because in many places the water and gas are PUMPED to the customer.   So I opted for a counter top gravity fed British Berkfield  filter instead which means i can scavenge water from multiple sources and put it through the Berkfield.