There’s a lot of information out there about hard water, acidic water, even the chlorine in municipal water – and it can be more than a little confusing. Everybody out there has a product to sell, and some of them are good products, not a thing wrong with them, but a lot of the information you’re going to get takes one particular angle just to sell that product, whether it be a water softening system, an acid neutralizing system, or a reverse osmosis (filtering) system. All of these have their place in treating your household water, but if you aren’t educated about these types of water treatment and how they relate to your particular water situation, you’re liable to feel like you’re being “sold” or “scared” into buying something you don’t understand, without understanding what you really need.
Below, we get into the real dangers of hard water, acidic water, and contaminated drinking water, and break down the real, not hyped-up, problems with each. Hopefully, this info will set you at ease about the right approach for your home and your family. The right solution depends on your particular situation.
Part 2: Contaminated Drinking Water
When we talk about “contaminants” we’re covering a pretty wide range of elements. Anything you don’t want in your water is a “contaminant.” For our purposes here we’ll refer to bacteria and microorganisms, chlorine, and heavy metals. Bacteria and microorganisms are things no one wants in their drinking water. Chlorine is used to treat this problem in municipal water and well water, but no one likes the taste of chlorine. Of course heavy metals like lead, copper, and iron are things most people want to have removed from the water they drink. Not only are there health concerns with putting these things into your body, they make the water taste bad. This is especially true with something like iron – we all need it, but we don’t want orange water that tastes like we’re sucking on nickels. When it comes to our drinking water, we want it safe, free of a metallic taste, and free of chlorinated taste.
What to Do About It?
For drinking water, nothing beats filtration. The Brita company made a fortune selling water pitchers with activated charcoal filters. On a small scale, it’s not a bad solution. But if you want the water coming out of your tap to be filtered and pure, installing a reverse osmosis system right under your kitchen sink is the answer. Reverse osmosis sounds like a fancy term, but it simply describes the way that the system goes about filtering your water. In these systems, water first travels through a carbon pre-filter to remove organic contaminants as well as chlorine and it’s compounds. Then your water passes through a very thin membrane. This is where the “osmosis” part happens. After water has passed through these filtering stages it is ready to drink. What comes out of the tap is free of contaminants, chlorine, and metallic taste.
Interested to learn more about how we can help with your contaminated drinking water issues? We’d be happy to stop by your property to assess the problem and provide some solutions. If you live or work in eastern Baltimore or Harford County, please consider us at Coldwright Plumbing & Heating your go-to plumbers!
We serve the towns of Joppa, Abingdon, Fallston, Belcamp, Forest Hill, Bel Air, Aberdeen, Baldwin, Hunt Valley, Kingsville, White Marsh, Towson, Fulton, Middle River, Perry Hall and more! Call us or request a quote online!
