Local tap is dubious at best and leaded at worst so we fill 5gallon jugs at a filter station the next town over. I’m getting tired of transporting and paying for water, so I’d like to make a filter that won’t just clog up with hard water in a week. Anyone have recommendations on where to start?
Get your water tested. You can throw all sorts of filters and treatments at it, but unless you know what’s in your water, you won’t know what’s important.
Your local government might have people that can test your water. You really want someone who will actually come over and collect the water themselves, it’s really easy to do it wrong and end up contaminating the collected water.
There are companies that can design a good treatment setup for you. Or you can do some research and get your own.
We have a softener and a “commercial” reverse osmosis unit with a built-in diaphragm pump and a 14 gallon pressure tank. We have been doing yearly changes on the filters. Household of 3 though.
The softener is a puronics brand, the RO unit is Ecosoft RObust 1500.
Not needing to tackle hard water stains and build up every 2 weeks made it worth it, but it was a significant investment (plus we ran RO lines from the garage/tank to the kitchen).
And with the pump set to 60psi, I can have infinite carbonated water without another expensive setup.