Reverse Osmosis Systems in Residential Neighborhoods

Posted in Home Improvement
by Peter Patterson

If you believe what the many of these marketers of residential reverse osmosis systems are saying, you would think that these residential reverse osmosis systems were a revolutionary piece of equipment at your fingertips. The only problem is that the reverse osmosis systems residential benefits have not exactly been what people are expecting.

What is revolutionary is the fact that these systems are the first reverse osmosis systems built for home use and industrial use. Reverse osmosis has been a standard in water treatment facilities and used by the industrial world for quite some time. They are primarily used to keep mineral deposits from forming in machines such as boilers.

The reverse osmosis systems for residential use have only recently begun to be explored. Touted as the best water purifying system out there, it is basically a scaled down version of the filter that they use at the treatment facilities. But that doesn’t mean it’s effective. This filtering system leaves a lot to be desired in the way of water treatment and I’ll explain why.

Even though the idea of residential reverse osmosis systems is a relatively new one, the reverse osmosis system is actually older technology that has been utilized for water treatment for over a century. First introduced in order to slow down the death rate from waterborne diseases, the system only worked moderately well. It wasn’t until chlorine was introduced in 1908 that these systems began to be effective in cleaning water.

The problem with reverse osmosis is that it’s clearly not designed to be an effective water cleaning apparatus. The porous membrane filters used are primarily for demineralization and simply is not for the removal of anything smaller or lighter than a water molecule. That means that there are chances that microscopic compounds can still enter your drinking water and many reverse osmosis system owners aren’t finding out until after the fact.

There are many toxic chemicals flowing through our drinking water system and they flow through these filters used by reverse osmosis systems. So, hordes of bacterial agents, too small for the membrane filters to capture enter your water system. And the primary worry of owners of reverse osmosis systems is that their system is helpless in thwarting the contaminants.

It would be a safe assumption that if the reverse osmosis system at a water treatment facility failed in its mission to halt the flow of these toxins, that residential reverse osmosis systems don’t stand a chance at stopping these contaminants at all. That is because the reverse osmosis system is really only the first stage of what needs to be a multi-pronged attack in combating these micro contaminants.

Had many of the reverse osmosis systems residential owners done their research before they bought their unit, they would have known that these costly systems are not what they needed. They would have realized that there are whole house and point of use filtering systems that they could have gotten at a fraction of the price that they paid for these residential reverse osmosis systems

Residential reverse osmosis systems are not the answer. What is necessary in combating contaminants in your drinking water is the combination of an activated carbon filter and a multi block filter. Add a sub-micron filter and an ion exchange unit, and you have all the water purifying system that you’ll ever need.

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