Thanks for the update Lux. We had an RO on our drinking water for a number of years, but it was a bit more complicated to deal with than yours. The water hardness here is very high ( over 400 IIRC) and there is a lot of sediment in the water, somewhat depending on if the supply is coming from snow melt vs ground water that day.
The city switched from Cl2 to chloramines, which are much harder to remove, but still essential since many RO filters will not tolerate bleach, Cl2, chloramines and many other disinfectants. Interestingly, they used to tolerate this better, but the modern ones do not, so I tend to disinfect with vinegar, which is still not really recommended by the filter people, but it works.
In our case, we had to first run the water through a water softener to lower the hardness to viable levels, but this of course is really an ion exchange, so the Mg, etc are exchanged for Na ions - so the water actually became slightly salty tasting. The high chloramine count also put a lot of load on the charcoal pre-filter.
The region had a ban on our town discharging water softener salt brine into the drain, so we were forced for many years to use a "service" that delivered pre-charged ion-exchange resin canisters to the house every week. At $ 50 / month it was not breaking the bank, but certainly annoying. Eventually, someone sued and we were allowed to use normal softeners, but my wife had trouble with the water from the one we owned, so eventually we stopped using it, and the RO then also went away.
Now we use a large in-line filter that contains activated charcoal, filtration, etc. It is supposed to last for years, but in fact it clogs up in less than 3 months here. My next task is to install a coarse sediment filter to help extend the life of the drinking water filter.
I know that a lot of people are against bottled water for various reasons, but nearly all of them filter the water (which is more than my city does, and yes I have visited the water plant), most use RO and activated charcoal, and then inject ozone into the bottle to not only "kill" but actually destroy organics and pathogens. It is actually pretty decent stuff, and we keep some around as part of our emergency preparedness supplies. My kids like to use it as a drink for school and walking, which is a heck of a lot more healthy than soda.
If only cities would use ozone as part of their general water purification process, many issues would be eliminated, in fact all of the ones that forced cities to move to chloramines in the first place. If they used it on the sewage and rain water dischage, even more problems could be prevented.
