Although their popularity has declined over the last years, residential reverse osmosis systems are still one of the alternatives that the average consumer considers when he or she becomes aware of the importance of having clean, healthy water at his or her home.
After studying the pros and cons of these residential reverse osmosis systems, I came to the conclusion that I should advise against them. Below, I will give you the three top reasons to support my decision. I rank them in terms of importance, the first being the least important.
Reason #1: They are very slow in processing water. This drawback is directly related with their principle of operation: Water has to be pushed with high pressure through a porous membrane. Whatever has smaller molecules than the pores (water) passes through the other side, while whatever has larger molecules (pollutants) stays behind. This whole process is slow because of the time it takes for water to pass these very small pores.
Typically, it takes about two to three hours for enough water to pass through the membrane to produce 1 gallon of water. Because of this, residential reverse osmosis systems use storage tanks holding 2 to 5 gallons of water. When drinking water is drawn from the RO faucet, the water comes from the storage tank.
As you realize, this fact puts some restriction on the space you want allocated at your house, as well as on the level of availability of the water you want to have, in order to cover your everyday needs.
Reason #2: To make matters worse, most RO units waste a lot of water. Just to give you an indication, they typically use between 3 to 10 gallons of tap water to produce 1 gallon of purified water; the remainder drains away.
Because of this, you realize that your cost of ownership of the system will increase, as you water bill will go up due to higher water consumption. As this is not enough, you will also have to make an extra provision for the water drainage set up.
Reason #3: And here comes the most important reason which, even if the first two not existed, this alone should be enough to prevent you from purchasing residential reverse osmosis systems. As I already mentioned, operation of this system is based on the difference in the molecular size of water on the one hand and a wide range of pollutants on the other. Now, unfortunately, together with these pollutants the system discards essential minerals that water contains. These are calcium, potassium and magnesium to name a few.
Let me say that you can very easily tell when water lacks minerals, or it is demineralized as the exact term goes. It tastes funny, or better yet, it doesn’t taste at all! It is flat.
But, being tasteless is not the only downside of demineralized water. Scientists agree that if you drink water that is deficient of essential minerals, then you are putting your health in serious danger. Following a thorough and long running study that they conducted, the World Health Organization published in their conclusions that it is imperative that drinking water should contain minimum levels of certain minerals.
Having said all the above about reverse osmosis systems, my advice to you is that you should consider investigating water multi filtration technology instead. To find relevant information and see what I use, visit my website.
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