Not all places get the same quality of water. The type of water supply will recommend what standard of purification your water will need. Clean water is a necessity, not just for drinking purposes, it is also important for cooking and other household purposes.
Every purifier has different uses. An RO and UV purifier will be able to remove odour from the water as well as inorganic salts and sand. Whereas carbon or sediment cartridges will remove sand and odour but can’t remove inorganic salts. This is why it’s important to know what kind of filtration your water needs.
Things to consider before buying a water purifier.
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Water quality
Water supplied to homes is usually hard water. This means that they have high inorganic salts like calcium, potassium, sodium, magnesium, bicarbonates, sulfates and chlorides.
How do you know you get hard water?
It is a simple test, fill a bottle half with water and pure liquid soap. Now shake the water bottle vigorously for about a minute. If there is a distinct lack of fluffy bubbles and the water appears cloudy and/or milky, your water is hard.
To handle purification of such water an RO is the best option for you. The membrane size of an RO is .0005 micron and makes it impossible to let through any particles to pass by.
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Contamination
Just like hard water, there can be other impurities in water. Contaminated water can have high levels of metals. Though iron is good for our bodies, other metals not so much. Contaminated water can have metals like lead, arsenic, copper, even iron. Any of these metals in high quantities can be harmful to our bodies. Because of industrialization and fishes, we have many impurities in the water we get at our homes. Industries dispose large amounts of waste in water, the waste generally has metals and nitrate. The RO system has reverse osmosis, which cleans most of these impurities, but some microorganisms might still pass through it.
For water with high contamination levels it is best to take RO+UV. UV rays will kill any microorganism that might have escaped the RO system and will be dead in the UV system.
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Water pressure
Your incoming water pressure is also an important factor to consider while purchasing a water purifier. As many electronic purifiers require a 5-40 pounds per square inch pressure to be able to function properly. If you don’t have the said pressure available at your home easily, you will have to attach a booster to increase the pressure. If not an electric RO system, you can opt for an activated carbon purifier.
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Electricity
As mentioned above, you can choose from both electrical and non-electrical water purifiers. For areas that have a lot of power cuts or even rural areas without electricity, there are options available.
An RO system would not work without electricity as it uses electric power to provide enough water pressure for the RO membrane.While RO and UV systems remove TDS and bacteria that cause water-borne diseases, the non-electric purifiers can only get rid of some of the chemicals dissolved in water, along with germs and sand.
