Re: Cold Water Dispenser
Darkcobra, yes, those RO water stores are pretty common, the one near my old place charges 20 cents/gallon. I guess if you can bring a few 5 gal jugs home in the car once a week, the expense won't too high.
Re the dual filtering, here's the problem as I see it: the two filters are probably a ceramic filter (to remove bacteria) and a carbon filter (to remove chemicals). Neither one of them will remove minerals, because they can't. Minerals are what makes your water hard. For stuff like cooking and appliances, maybe you should look into a softener, as explained above.
The url's I linked don't make home RO sound so bad, but as I say, I've never owned one myself. The good units start around $300 and need maybe $50/year in upkeep, so they'll take a couple years to pay for themselves as compared to buying 10 gal/week at the water store, on a pure cost basis. Personally I'd hate the inconvenience of bringing home that much water every week instead of purifying it at home, but YMMV.
Darkcobra, yes, those RO water stores are pretty common, the one near my old place charges 20 cents/gallon. I guess if you can bring a few 5 gal jugs home in the car once a week, the expense won't too high.
Re the dual filtering, here's the problem as I see it: the two filters are probably a ceramic filter (to remove bacteria) and a carbon filter (to remove chemicals). Neither one of them will remove minerals, because they can't. Minerals are what makes your water hard. For stuff like cooking and appliances, maybe you should look into a softener, as explained above.
The url's I linked don't make home RO sound so bad, but as I say, I've never owned one myself. The good units start around $300 and need maybe $50/year in upkeep, so they'll take a couple years to pay for themselves as compared to buying 10 gal/week at the water store, on a pure cost basis. Personally I'd hate the inconvenience of bringing home that much water every week instead of purifying it at home, but YMMV.
