Whether it’s new science or just scare tactic headlines, avoiding the storm of potential toxins in our environment has become the hot topic of discussion across all the social media platforms. Microplastics are in your water, in your food and in your blood and there’s nothing you can do about it. Except, you can try to start limiting the number of new particles introduced to your body by limiting plastic use in cooking/heating food, buying pre-packaged foods and also filtering you home water supply.
To me, this actually wasn’t my primary reason for finally deciding to do this, but rather the final straw that pushed my decision. For me the real tangible benefits are primarily 2 things. First is to remove some of the hardness and minerals from the water supply that tend to build up in faucets, shower heads and humidifier filters. This should help reduce long term maintenance and potentially recoup some of the cost of installation and filter replacements.
The second and original reason for installing the system was to eliminate the chlorine from the city water supply. As my area has been getting quickly built up, I get the feeling the water supply company in the area is having issues keeping up with the increasing demand with the aging system. What once was a non-existent, or at most a very rare occurrence of chlorine smell to the water had become a monthly occurrence. Perhaps they are doing small bursts of higher concentration to make sure the water supply is sanitary, which I do appreciate. The result however is a fairly strong smell that shows up for a few hours and is quite concerning when that’s the water used for everything in your house.
Since installing the 3M system, the smell is gone and water straight from the faucet actually taste good to drink. Our water was never very bad so it’s not likely we magically had better skin, hair or other noticeable health benefits. More piece of mind with noticably better water.
Now the downsides, because everything has a cost. Installation was not cheap, but that’s because we had a plumber do it up right with copper piping. Flexible pex with sharkbites would probably do for most people, but I personally hate plumbing issues so would rather pay more to have it done right. The filters themselves are a couple hundred dollars and could last you a year, but for us I expect to go through 2-3 per year. Adding a secondary, cheaper inline filter before the current one to filter our just the minerals would probably let us go closer to the full year, but we haven’t done that yet. Last is water pressure. With a new filter there is barely any noticeable difference on our ~20gps line, but as the filter gets filled with material it starts to slow down and limits you to 1 high flow (shower, washer, etc) at a time. Still not the end of the world, but definitely a negative.
So should you do it? Well I can’t tell you what’s write for you, but for me there were enough reasons to justify the expense and so far I have been happy to have done it. With the current plumbing setup I can always choose to bypass the filter (like when filling the pool in summer) to eek out every last bit of filter life, but I am blessed to be fortunate enough to consider the replacement cost acceptable. If you have concerns about your water quality and can afford the install and filters, I think it’s at least worth a look.
