Yes, filtered water is cleaner, purer, and healthier — we all know that. But do you really need a whole house water filter installed? Is it worth the price?
In this article, we’ll discuss all of the benefits and cost savings it offers, and provide you with a logical conclusion on whether it’s worth it for your house. Let’s start!
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Benefits of Whole House Water Filters
The main benefit of these filtration systems is that they effectively remove chlorine and other sediments from your tap water. You’ll find this feature available in the cheaper and mid-range whole house water filters too.
Some more expensive ones, sometimes costing thousands of bucks, can provide fancier cleaning technologies like reverse osmosis.
High-end options claim to remove all of the micro-contaminants that may be present in your water, such as chemical by-products, heavy metals, and several forms of bacteria.
The more they cost, the better their capabilities and features get. However, even the reasonably priced whole house water filters get the main cleaning task done, i.e. removing chlorine and sediments.
Chlorine in water can cause several types of allergies and skin irritations when it comes into contact with your skin. If you’ve ever felt itchy after a long swim with eyes gone red, that’s attributed to the pool’s chlorine content. Getting rid of that from your tap water can keep various health risks at bay, especially if you have babies at home.
For finer protection, you can go with options having higher quality water filtering cartridges.
Dig through the specs list to find the cartridge’s micron number if you don’t mind getting a bit nerdy with your online purchase. Lower values mean that the system will easily remove the smaller contaminants in your water.
Indirect Cost Savings
Apart from the direct benefits mentioned above, there’s a long list of potential cost savings on the side. It’s all thanks to a whole house water filtration system.
A whole house water filter might be an enemy of impurities, but a close friend of your plumbing and electrical appliances. They’ll save your taps, water heating systems, washing machines, dishwashers, and every other water-based appliance from accumulating scaling residue.
Scaling occurs when the minerals in hard water stick to surfaces while the water evaporates away, leaving a chalky white buildup on everything the water comes into contact with.
Apart from giving you cleaning nightmares, scaling makes your electrical appliances less energy-efficient and reduces their lifespan. Some of the particles in unfiltered water can even build up over time and lead to corrosion.
This naturally translates into higher repairs, maintenance, and replacement costs. Whole house water filters can lead to tremendous cost savings in those departments. They also keep your electricity bill from going up due to inefficient appliances.
Most importantly, it prevents skin and hair damage caused by impurities in unfiltered water. With chlorine-free water, you can save yourself and your family from long-term health risks. This especially applies if you also drink your tap water.
So, you’ll even be saving up on medical bills without ever knowing it. Keeping all of this in mind, the one-time cost of installing a whole house water filter definitely seems worth it.
Why Is It Important?
To sum things up, let’s discuss the key reasons why it’s essential to have one of these systems installed.
Your water is most probably treated with chlorine, as it’s one of the most common chemicals added to water to ward off bacteria growth.
It kills bacteria and microorganisms to disinfect water. It attacks the bacteria’s cell wall and kills it off, along with other undesirable microorganisms. Chlorine does this through its naturally ‘harsh’ nature, terminating bacteria by penetrating and shutting down its cells.
The bacteria cells modify as a result of chlorine’s attack. However, as great as that sounds, it can also negatively impact human cells when the chemical gets ingested in drinking water or comes into contact with the skin through daily use.
Chlorine’s disinfection capabilities have saved many lives in the last few decades by preventing countless cases of and other waterborne illnesses like dysentery, typhoid fever, etc.
However, some minor skin irritation isn’t the only caveat to all of these benefits. Research shows that drinking chlorine-rich water regularly can significantly increase the risk of cancer.
As you and your family regularly uses (and possibly drink) tap water every day, the harmful effects of chlorine can snowball into serious long-term health concerns.
Conclusion
With a whole house water filtration system in place, you’ll get to enjoy the best of both worlds. The chlorine will disinfect the water and keep it free of bacteria as it reaches your household. Once it gets there, the chlorine will get filtered out, which means you don’t have to deal with either of those issues.
Keeping these safety issues in mind, especially when combined with the cost savings mentioned above, it becomes a no-brainer to get an effective filtration solution installed as soon as possible.
