Every time you think about tap water, perhaps you considered it an essential part of your life that is purely clean. Surely this is not the whole truth and certainly not what you’ve signed up for! We all seek out this fluid that is absolutely essential for our life and we certainly want it to be healthy and sustainable.
Each exposure to the regular home water supply makes more prone to absorb chlorine, fluorine, trihalomethanes, pesticide, and other undesirable mixtures. These are all the mixture you in the tap water you are not aware of. Consequently, regular tap water gives you unwanted health outcomes. At this point you and me we all come to the conclusion that there should be a better way around.
We neglect this fact but drinking tap water can be dangerous. By default, the sources of tap water are refined in the water refinery capitals in the city. However, something is neglected and that is the feed line.
The regular tap water is sometimes smelly and doesn’t taste good. Also, tap water doesn’t contain minerals and many health-benefiting ingredients. The best shower filter at least has 5 stages of water purification stages. And each stage has an exclusive removing system.
If the water goes a long way, then the probability of getting polluted via decades-old pipelines is high. Often tap water gets polluted with dust debris. As old as these pipelines water source gets more contaminated with more viruses and bacteria. and this higher the chances of involvement of microorganisms.
Have you ever noticed when you turn your kitchen tap and you see the brown or reddish water flows to the sink? Or the water you have frequent exposure to is smelly? if you see these two signs it signifies that there is iron in your local water supply.
Different formation of rock and soil leak into the pipeline and the soil surrounding these will bring iron and this contaminates the water. Because iron spreads only with a tiny percentage, it’s concentration distributes very quickly and you end up with a seeable color in the water.
Once iron is in your water, this supply can be categorizing as heavy water. even if you try to cook with it, the iron contamination won’t get dissolved. For instance, if your preparing a dish with vegetables, then, for the most part, these greens will absorb the iron and their color turns into black.
Since this phenomenon is very common. The consequence of iron contamination would be dry skin. On top of that, you see often stains with orange color on the bathroom supplies and dark tone colors on the washed clothes.
How to combat all these? Follow along to figure out the smartest solutions.
Find out which shower filter is the right choice for you?
Initial step: identifying the type of contamination in your water supply
The best shower filter system eliminates 99% of particles such as arsenic, chlorine, chloride, heavy metals, viruses and bacteria and other forms of contamination. The optimum case removes near to 1000 contaminates.
Each one of the shower filters noted above is good at removing a certain type of contaminants. By all the considerations you need to test the running water in your home or relevant places. Only at this point, you can understand which option is the best pick for your particular usage.
Check the water pH: Commonly you may find typical hardness such as pesticides, viruses, and bacteria. However, these are not all. testing the water pH is equally important because water acidity and taste can be identified with pH level.
How to measure the quality of water and its pH?
For this purpose, purchasing a water testing kit is a great first step. A good quality test kit determines water standard via 170 diverse factors. Essential water test kits control the presence of 8 different forms of bacteria, granted if the room temperature doesn’t influence the state of bacteria.
When you want to pick out a suitable water quality testing kit, you should pay attention to three main aspects. those are the water source you want to examine, the testing procedure and the targeted contaminants.
Surly testing public supply requires another method in comparison with regular home water supply or pool. Each testing kit is formulated differently, therefore, the source of water is an important consideration. Certain water testing kits are good for identifying specific particles while others only specify the ubiquitous of bacteria and viruses. Below we introduce four types of water quality testing kits and you can choose one that meets your needs:
If you are looking for an easy, fast and DIY solution, water testing quality kit with strips are the proper water quality examiners. This type ensures that water doesn’t have major quality problems and in general terms, it is an indication of the fact that further testing is not needed. Yet strip water quality test doesn’t provide detailed specifications.
A more dependable choice is specific strips that test different components. For this, a series of strips are used to test the availability of copper, iron, lead, toxin components like fertilizers and pesticides. A pack of these strips is designed to control nitrates and nitrites as well. The amount of all these unwanted particles is shown on the strips after the end of the water quality test. If you don’t want to spend time and money taking a result from a professional laboratory this can be a good option.
The two water quality testers above are a one-time trial. This means you cannot make a firm decision about the quality of on-going water. A multi-use testing kit can be very beneficial for regular water quality tests. Within a package of multi-use drinking water test kit, you get at least 100 tests. Each test clearly indicates the amount of 9 crucial water contaminants like copper and iron. The strips show the pH level as well as the allowed amount of chlorine. The only disadvantage is that this water quality testing kit is not sufficient in terms of checking the bacteria. If you are suspicious about the presence of bacteria you need to perform separate testing.
Bacteria water test kits are exclusively designed to double-check Coli and fecal coliform, legionella, enteroviruses such as echoviruses and coxsackieviruses. This test provides you with a clear answer about the presence and type of virus. Bacteria water test often comes with a couple of strips that check the level of nitrites and nitrates.
Along with the water quality checker and solutions mentioned above, you can also get a quality report from an authoritative source. This will bring you certainty about the health of the water. The only disadvantage is that once for example a sample of tap water is taken, depending on the temperature and conditions the combination of the molecules and contaminates may change due to the various aspects like varying temperature, etc.
The best shower filters
When you understand the level of contamination in the source, it is time to think about the resolvents. If you are searching for the best shower filter for your home you need to pay attention to a number of criteria. Generally, four main particularities should be considered and those are the capability of filtration, quality, and durability aligned with the customer experience and price point.
A good quality shower filter should be consistent with premium results for at least a couple of years. And it certainly needs great customer service. The usage of the faucet as such may not be easy at first and technical difficulties should be resolved via supporting services.
To set the expectation, a great quality shower filter should be able to eliminate lead, mercury, arsenic, cyst, rust, and dust, balance out the high level of chlorine and neutralize bad smell and taste.
In the first step, it’s good to understand the concepts behind shower filters’ technologies and shower filter systems. Common shower filter structures noted below:
Activated carbon
Ceramic
Distillation
Reverse osmosis
UV
Multistage technology
If you cut off the water supply, you can survive for a long time. Therefore, water means life. Every molecule within the body is made of water even a significant portion of bone is made of water. To be precise 25 percent. It is recommended to drink up 2.4 liters of water on a daily basis to remain in healthy statues all the time.
The shortcut is easy. a great shower filter will free you from buying any bottled water and bring health to all the aspects of your body. Good quality water should lead you to drink water more regularly. Especially if you are in an arid climate area, it is essential to double up the amount of your water intake. Drinking At least 16 cups of water is necessary for the health of the body.
How does every water filtration work?
The water molecule format is often overlooked. However, it has an uncommon structure. The structure causes a better state of dissolving for almost everything. At first glance, this seems to be a very good feature. You simply throw your dirty clothes in the washing machine and water like a magnet will absorb all the dust and dirt. However, there come some disadvantages along with it!
Water constantly is circulating and as long as it is in a cycle it will absorb unwanted mixture to itself. The next stream of water from the tap will either end up in your glass, washing machines or bath and bathroom.
Now there is always this doubt and it is not certain that the water you end up with what cycle it went through. At every stage, water can attract and dissolve dirt in itself.
Basically shower filters, in the general picture, utilize two diverse techniques to eliminate the dirt. One is physical filtration and the other one is a chemical purification system. The first system removes larger particles. For instance, a thin textile membrane can be removed by a physical filtration of water. The second method as noted above is chemical filtration. Water runs through active materials that either chemically or organically remove impurities. In the following section, each technology is discussed with more details.
How activated carbon shower filter works?
In a carbon filtered water system, there are many holes in each section which makes the shower filter similar to the sponge.
By this undesired gasses and particles are attached to carbon and other components in the water purification. Then remaining diminutive particle is attracted to the activated carbon layer. Simply All the contaminants get filled up in these ridges on the carbon plate.
This system of water filtration can eliminate most particles and contaminants. However, some contaminants like limescale won’t get removed or dissolved via carbon activated shower filter.
Other micro-impurities like charcoal and fluoride as well as sodium and nitrate will remain in the water. Another drawback in carbon activated water filtration system is that those ridges mentioned above get clog up. This means that after some time the carbon plate should either get replaced or the whole carbon activated water filtration needs to be changed.
This system of water filtration is the most common for household systems. They are also known as activated carbon granules. Innately carbon is made from burning wood in the absence of oxygen supply. This material has a considerable internal area and this part is filled with may crannies. These sub-sections attract and trap chemical impurities through absorption.
While carbon activated shower filter is great for low scale impurities such as chlorine-based chemicals and common wastes in the water, they simply cannot cope with the hard water. Hard water includes nitrates and sodium and activated carbon water filter is unable to deal with this sort of water.
If you have large particles in the tap water that is seeable, activated carbon filters are the first options for you. Activated carbon filters easily absorb silt and sediment in the water.
Because of the structure of an activated carbon shower filter, the amount of chlorine and other components that make water stinky decreases. The result is a more pleasant source of tap water that is useable for a drink and many other activities.
What is the reverse osmosis shower filter?
Reverse osmosis water filtration system often caught the sight. The initiation of this water system was by the goal of segregating the sea salt from the seawater. since then it has evolved and along with many inventions, it has become a popular choice for water purification systems.
Then may companies initiate to use this method to preserve bottled water from a diverse range of contaminants. At the kernel of this purifying system, there is a semi-permeable membrane.
The name of this purification system refers to the pressure is used to segregate the particles from the water molecules. Simply water s forced out from the membrane and the unwanted particles cannot pass through this.
This water purification system is a noticeable choice because it almost removes all the unwanted particles and contaminants in the water. The refined water for home use will be premium, odor-free and pleasant.
In facile terms, following this technology, a very fine filter is put into this water purification system. Water passes through this via imposed pressure. Once this happens water gets passed by while the contaminates particles remain. Via a closer look at the reverse osmosis water filtration, we can understand it’s architecture.
When we have a mixture of two solutions, there is a need to segregate the less concentrated solution from the semi-concentrated part. While passing through a permeable membrane the liquid endeavors to rearrange it’s structure so that both have the same concentration.
A deeper look reveals that water moves flow under osmotic pressure. This means that osmosis causes water to flow in one direction-from the less concentrated to the more concentrated side.
To purify the water reverse osmosis will act the other way around. Water will be imposed to flow from a more concentrated part to the less congested division. For this, a sort of energy should be spent and the actual procedure is done by electrically powered pumps.
The membranes can be made from various combinations. The stages are as follows: the water comes through the filter, at first traps, the larger particles and those could be sediment and silt. Later water goes through RO membrane and at this stage, all the impurities and contaminants will get the filter out. In the final stage, all the miniature impurities get removed. And water is ready for a drink and other eatable usages. The result is crystal clear water that is truly pleasant to drink.
The reverse osmosis shower filter has a similar outcome like carbon activated shower filter. This purification system is capable of eliminating salt, nitrate, and limescale and other contaminates as such. A downside of reverse osmosis filter is that it produces a drastic amount of wastewater. For instance, in some cases, reverse osmosis may end up with a ratio of 1 to 4 which means only one liter of clean water will be produced out of 5 total.
What is the ion-exchange water filtration system?
Ion exchange water filtration is great at eliminating the limescale and softening the water. The straight forward procedure is that it electrically charge the electrons of the atom, then trap the ions and exchange them with the good ones.
In the hard water, you in most cases find a compound of magnesium and calcium. When hard water gets to pass through ion exchanger water filtration this compound breaks into separate particles. The filter finds the ions of these two and substituted them with their sodium ions.
The advantage of this purification system is that it gets rid of troublesome ions. Ion exchange is typically made of zeolite beads and these beads contain sodium ions. Because of this base ion exchanger, the water purification system finds other contaminants attractive. So the ions won’t contain calcium and magnesium as they scape from the filter and are exchanged with the embedded ions in the base of the filter.
A drawback in this system is that the ion-exchange system might replace other unwanted ions with the harmful ones. A case of this is that if you have a particular diet that obliges you to consume no sodium then this purification system doesn’t seem to be the proper choice.
In simple terms, the control over the end result of ion exchange water purification is not certain. There is less control over this and the term wholly clean water is not very just.
Additionally, after some time you are required to recharge the ion-exchanger filter. In most cases, you need to specific kind of salt designed for this kind of shower filter.
The third type is water ionizers. Taken from the name within this water purification system. Simply this means that water is purified with two plates and these two are charged with electricity. Precisely two different streams cause the water purification. This water ionizer is a great option since it lowers the acidity level of the water.
What is UV shower filtration system?
The next option is one of the newest trends in the market. UV shower filters utilize ultraviolet radiations to refine the water components and molecules. By this type of radiation, they directly destroy the unwanted health-damaging contaminants like viruses and bacteria.
Additionally, you can use an infrared filter to bring more softness to the water. The basic concept is that this type of water purification system uses light and heat to remove unwanted particles and provide more softness for the water