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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

What are the current best Home Water Filter we could get? Are the Brita MAXTRA+ any good? And which one is the most affordable?

( We now need to paid extra money to get drinking water, in many ways I think this is backward as a society )

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Reverse-osmosis based systems are the current best, cheap and, well, pretty much the only ones available on the market, since it's the cheapest way to purify water. But they have a learning curve, require quite a bit of maintenance and waste some water. Although I believe you can trade wear out of the membrane for less water waste, if water is too expensive in your region. The most basic system costs like $100, has at least five filtering stages with three different cartridge replacement rates and likely needs periodic chlorine disinfection. You can add other stages afterwards: mineralization, UV, etc.

About the best commonly available setup is a carbon filter and reverse osmosis. Something like [1], but Some things are still going to get through though [2]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/HiKiNS-Filtration-RO-125G-Efficiency-...

[2] https://www.quora.com/Is-there-anything-that-a-reverse-osmos...

I live in one of the highly contaminated municipalities-- almost everyone here is doing GAC (granular activated carbon) on all water entering the home, and Reverse Osmosis at point-of-use. Idea being that the GAC gets a good amount of the problem filtered out for water you might use topically, and GAC+RO for drinking, cooking, etc. ideally gets almost everything for water you ingest. RO is not good at providing high flow rates without giant reserve tanks, so it's a reasonable trade off. The cost is not bad, each system is a couple hundred bucks, and simple enough to DIY install if you're so inclined.

Brita's are pretty much unless unfortunately. As are most pitcher style filter systems. Faucet mounted systems are probably the easiest way to go (eg Pur), but better under the counter or household water filters do exist.

Its also worth mentioning that there good chance that a water filter won't actually filter this out. Water treatment plants will often treat the water through multiple levels of filtration, reverse osmosis, UV treatment, ozone treatment, etc.

> Brita's are pretty much unless unfortunately.

How do you figure that? They're the same carbon filters as found in the faucet systems.

They are both carbon filters, but they are not the same.

I got concerned about water quality (specifically lead) right before the Flint after doing some plumbing work in my apartment. After some digging I found a report detailing PPM before and after filtration. Brita's generally filtered less than 20 percent of containment with the exception of things like chlorine which naturally off gas. The faucet systems generally removed 80-90%.

They're granulated. The good under sink filters are carbon block.

Berkey Filters : https://www.berkeyfilters.com/

https://theberkey.com/blogs/water-filter/the-best-water-filt...

Are there any independent tests to back up the claims made about Berkey filters? I was given a Berkey filter and I spent some time trying to find independent validation of their claims. All I could find were just circular references between "sources" in the scammy "natural" health industry.

You can get a full blown Reverse Osmosis system. But it does deplete the water of all minerals.

There are some good standalone water filters (but Brita is not too good): https://web.archive.org/web/20170815211007/http://waterfilte...

Looks like they are preparing some new tests: http://www.waterfilterlabs.com/Index.html

RO system is the best as many have mentioned.

However, of the pitcher filters, ZEROWATER is the only one certified to remove lead. It's what I use.

Reverse osmosis only for peace of mind. Nothing else is worth it in my opinion.

But then there is not enough minerals in the water. How do you deal with that ?

You can remineralize with limestone post-filtration.

Or eat food.

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