Having really clean water to drink, to use in the kitchen and use for cooking, clean water to bathe and shower and brush your teeth… is beyond critical.
And water across our world is generally in crisis right now.
It’s polluted with so many pharmaceuticals, accidental and purposely added chemicals like fluoride, agricultural poisons runoff, and even nano-particles and aluminum particles that the list of dangers seems endless.
What comes out of your tap in any large or small city is highly polluted.
And what comes out of your ground water well is highly polluted.
And what comes out of the plastic jugs or glass bottles or special boxes of store water is highly polluted and contaminated.
I recommend filtering whatever water you use as best you can. Filtering water is expensive and often multi-stage and not ideal for renters. Do what you can.
And SOFT WATER is NOT FILTERED, CLEAN water unless a correct water filter is used together with the softener.
WHOLE HOUSE filters if you can are best, for kitchen work, bathing, for outside gardening water.
But NOT used for daily drinking or cooking water. You will want cleaner water for drinking and cooking than even comes with a whole house filter unless the whole house filter comes as a SYSTEM that also includes a reverse osmosis unit for drinking water and an additional post-filter fluoride filter.
Talk with a water filtering specialist in your area for what medias you have available for custom canisters.
Keep in mind traditional water softeners using salt can corrode some hot water heater anodes and corrode the tank interior, corrode some of the plumbing and introduce additional toxins and heavy metals into your water. Even plants and fish tanks are unable to use soft water safely, why would humans?
An intelligent discussion about this problem with water softeners is here.
And water softeners still leave all the other toxic water chemicals and pollutants besides the exchanged minerals– in place. So any water softener unit MUST still be installed with a water FILTER too.
You will want the large/tall whole-house size canisters filled with special KDF media, special carbon blocks, and/or special catalytic carbon (for chloramines). The medias can be mixed and matched.
And none of that will filter out the fluoride. But if you have the plumbing space and funds, you can add an additional canister behind the primary one(s) with special filtering media to get the fluoride out.
You will also want a small extra post filter to capture any media “fines” that escape the canisters into final water. You will want the unit to back flush (and if you are like my mid-sized city, you will need to back flush it DAILY and NOT just every 5 days).
You might have to change all the media out much sooner than the 5-7 or more years stated by your water company. Be vigilant in testing the water every year or two.
And you will want a UV light rigged into your plumbing (that is changed yearly) as the final step to kill any remaining bacteria that could be sitting in your pipes. The final water will of course not be chlorinated.
For more portable and personal units, this article from the Peak Prosperity website includes many really good items in their article. All the products are linked to the large online retailer. The affiliate links on their website have nothing to do with me or this website as a note. But the information is valid and if you can find the products sold through a local store or from the manufacturer online, that is a better way to support and purchase needed products. But again, the info is great in the article and it could give you additional ideas.
For renters, there are high end shower filters for bathing (they are very limited in what they can filter and need to be replaced every month or two), and garden hose-end filters for garden watering available if you look.
If you have a balcony, indoor or outdoor garden do NOT use your chlorinated or chloramines polluted house water.
If you are in a legal rain water catchment state, see if you can figure out a way to collect rain water for gardening and other. You could filter rain water through a Berkey filter for example for drinking. Rain water is often more free of pollutants but can contain aluminum geo-engineering particles. Look online for options.
FOR DRINKING and cooking water:
If you have the space for it and the funds, my first choice is to have a professionally installed reverse osmosis system installed in the kitchen sink with all the correct pre and post filters, UV light etc. AND keep it meticulously maintained with the membranes and filters and UV light never getting over saturated.
Drink enough water daily to ideally pee about every two hours. Usually it’s about a quart and a half or so of reverse-osmosis or Berkey filtered water per day.
Many think drinking a cup or two of water first thing in the morning upon waking up has been really beneficial to them. I do this and agree!
Coffee, juice and milk do NOT count as water!
Have an interesting glass water bottle you can keep near where you work or are near a lot during the day to remind you to sip a bit during the day.
I use a re-purposed 20-year-old quart glass milk jar with a pop-top that I keep with an ice pack in a padded food bag on my counter top. Some people use a decorative Mason jar.
Alternately to an RO system, the passive Berkey water filter system would be ideal.
Even having one of their small units as emergency backup if the electricity runs out is highly recommended (the whole house and RO systems do take electricity for the UV lights as well as back flushing and maybe other functions).
For my drinking and cooking water, I still use a 35 year old water distiller that is made of a hand-blown, glass chamber and glass tubing that was designed and made by a man during the 90’s. That company and those designs are no longer being made or used that I know of.
I distill into glass gallon jars.
I add a tiny amount of clean salt to the final water product I drink.
Distilled water is NOT RECOMMENDED unless you can get a hold of a very similar, glass unit.
The man designed the unit to use a dual pre-filter of carbon (regularly changed) to remove many of the VOCs that could still end up in the final distilled water.
I have since upgraded the carbon filter to filter out fluoride which can otherwise be distilled in the final water.
I added a small, portable RV-use water softener to the unit (regularly recharged).
Be aware that distilled water is highly aggressive. The distillers made today are made of metal chambers and condensing pathways. Sometimes the condensing tubes are made of silicon or latex. However, those materials were part of this glass distiller’s history of experiments. The final water was always full of leeched metal and plastics components and chemicals, enough so it could be tasted in the water.
Distilled water purchased packaged in plastic jugs is likely contaminated with plastics chemicals.
I don’t recommend using distilled water on a daily basis for these reasons, unless you too have a full glass unit.
Follow the link to read the full discussion about real food and water.
