The Essential Guide to Improving Residential Water Quality and Taste

When you’re thinking of plumbing water for a building, you have to consider where the water is going, and make sure it’s clean enough for all possible uses. That’s not a trivial challenge. 80% of the country’s water infrastructure is past its useful life so most water delivered to homes is on its second delivery system. Fixing these delivery systems won’t be cheap, or easy.

Aesthetic issues vs. structural ones

Water issues fall into two main categories, and each calls for different solutions.

The first one is aesthetic. These are the problems that you can easily sense – the chemical smell, taste, or the skin-tightening effects that your water has on you. More often than not these problems arise from the residual chlorine and chloramines left in the water supply by cities and municipalities. They add them as part of the disinfection treatment, perfectly safe for drinking, but the harmful byproducts are left in the water you use for bathing, cooking, and drinking.

The second category is structural. You may not be able to feel the excess calcium and magnesium leaving deposits in your pipes, in your appliances physically, but you will surely feel it in the hit your wallet will take regarding your repairing and replacement expenses. That’s because hard water is leaving scale and deposits inside your appliances, restricting the flow of water and making your appliances work harder to get those same amounts of water up to the temperature you want.

Either category of water problems is bad enough. But unfortunately, one can’t fully explain the other, which is why general solutions do so little to eliminate them.

Why a glass filter won’t cut it

Pitcher filters and under-sink units address drinking water exclusively. They don’t protect what’s about your showerhead, flowing within your appliances, or building up in your pipes.

Homeowners are seeing the logic and convenience of broader solutions in this space. A whole house filtration system treats water at the point of entry – as it enters the home – which means every tap, shower, and appliance draws treated, great-tasting water. It’s a set-it-and-forget-it solution that remedies both aesthetic and structural issues in one go, rather than requiring a suite of stop-gap measures.

Most whole house systems start by passing incoming water through a sediment pre-filter, which catches the sand, rust, and silt that would’ve accelerated the wear and tear on following stages. Next up is activated carbon, which goes after the aforementioned chlorine, chloramines, VOCs, and the organics creating those taste and odor issues. Many systems also incorporate scale inhibition at this stage, which adds up to superior management of mineral content and enhanced protection for all downstream appliances.

The appliance argument

This is the point at which the numbers start to do some of the talking for you!

For instance, when scale builds up on the heating element of a water heater, that heating element has to work much harder (we’re talking longer time and hotter temperatures) to heat the water to the same output temperature. The energy-saving potential of softened/filtered water for water heating has previously been found to be up to an astonishing 24% – which, over years, blows out the cost of the softener.

Your appliances may be less top-of-mind in this discussion, however, I’d like to point out that a similar pattern is in play. Dishwashers, washing machines, and hot water systems cost a great deal of money to replace. Water softeners protect their lifespans by preventing the cumulative impact of mineral build-up over time. In practical terms, making sure that hard water and sediment aren’t attempting to do terrible things to your appliances could reasonably be styled as “appliance infrastructure” protection.

And bottled water? Doesn’t do ANYTHING to protect your appliances… Pitcher filters? Same!

Matching the system to the house

One important aspect to consider is the flow rate before installation. Each filter system has a specific flow rate measured in liters per minute. If you choose one that is too small for your home’s demand, you will experience low pressure, especially when using multiple water outlets simultaneously.

Here’s a rough way to evaluate your needs:

Determine how many peak-usage points may be used simultaneously (showers, appliances, faucets).

Know the pressure and flow of your main supply line.

Ensure that the rated flow of the system matches or slightly exceeds that demand.

An undersized filter can be a deal-breaker. If your shower suffers because of the filter, you will not use it. The rated flow of the system is thus not a technical detail – it’s a key criterion for use.

If your home has older pipes or fixtures, heavy metals like lead and copper can also leach into your water, so it’s a good idea to verify whether the system you’re interested in can handle those specific contaminants. Not all activated carbon filters are suitable for heavy metals, for example. Reverse osmosis can handle them, but since it rejects a large volume of water, it’s generally more cost-efficient at the point of use rather than as a whole-house solution.

Thinking about it the right way

The quality of water influences the water you consume, use to bathe, your appliance functionality, and the durability of your pipes. If you consider it an issue related to a specific tap, you will only solve this issue to some extent on a regular basis. However, if you think of it as a matter related to your home systems, you will solve it once and for all from the source. The price of a complete system is perceived differently when you think about what you are getting in return.