water filter recommendation?

[DonaldW]

Some people do like it "flat" in small glasses where it is quickly accessible and firmly manageable. Others like it in huge jugs where it can largely slosh around to your delight.

But describing water's "taste" is a completely subjective, if not a comical exercise.

Still I believe one should enjoy it in whatever form they prefer and as often and as sensually as is possible ;-)

[DonaldW]

Mr. Bill.... that link you provided is not working for me for some reason

Speaking of cost ..... I do personally know someone in Texas who throws away his R/O system and buys a new one every couple of years and he said it's because his manufacturer charges him more for a set of replacement filters than he paid for the whole R/O system. A little crazy; just like a modern day cartridge printer LOL. However, I have found membranes online for as low as $30 and a dual set (2 changes) of carbon/sediments for $35. So that's a $65 filter replacement for my R/O system for 2 years of service, or around $33 per year discounting water cost. At $3 per 5 gallon pure water container one purchases in Mexico, one should be able to add up the cost difference. And that's totally ignoring convenience. If you have an ice maker and plan to attach it to your R/O system, I guarantee once you use it for a while you'd pay almost anything to enjoy your pure ice and never fill another tray again. (I guarantee there is nothing like a "flat" taste of water in a cocktail. In fact, I can never recall hearing anyone say that they miss the taste of the ice in their favorite beverage. ;-)

Now the water supply cost has not been factored into this, true; but according to the people at the San Miguell micro brew company I previously referred to, the waste water is about equal to the filtered water. They have holding tanks for both the pure water and the wash-by water. They use the wash-by water to do initial cleans on all their equipment and to mop the floors.

True, there is a certain romantic ritual to ordering water in Mexico, the yelling up and down the hill, the calling for and scheduling it, the social interaction of the young man who brings it up or down the hill and the managing of it all. But so are many aspects of the Mexican way of life. For me personally, after a few years of this ritual of water management, I elected to start thinking of automating the water part of the process and leaving the romance to things I didn't use so much of. I cook a lot and consume a lot of water, plus it's great to never run out, be it a holiday, late at night or when you just don't feel like fooling with it any more. Also not being that great of a cook, I don't want any water flavor getting in the way of the flavor of any of my dishes. I have enough of a challenge as it is.

In closing, there are many arguments for and against a real or imagined taste, examining price discussions, ideology, romance of the purchase ritual or simply falling into a marketing ploy, but in the end it all turns into a matter of choice. Also at odds in the selection process is the fact our culture places a lot more emphasis on these arguments than to actual scientific data, and that's even if you could find true data on your municipal water system or the filter you buy. In reality there may be too many factors which can cause our health to be harmed by the water we drink vs. other elements to even properly debate the issue. As some have pointed out there are many, many Mexican people who have lived to be a ripe old age and had daily doses of water much worse than what's on tap today.

This sort of reminds me of one of my favorite lyrics of a Willie Nelson song, "I Gotta Get Drunk' and that's the line "... there's more old drunks than there are old doctors, so I guess I'd better have another round"

[cam00]

FYI, a very good reason to go REVERSE OSMOSIS water filtration systems to remove heavy metal contamination from filtered water, along with serious worldwide "chemtrail" spraying composed of nano-particulates of barium, strontium, magnesium and aluminum oxides, being found in soil and water samples worldwide in mega-excess of normal rates. Remember that GTO is a prime "tourist attraction" and true info related to heavy metal contamination of groundwater will likely be suppressed:

Paper No. 151-0
NATURAL VS. ANTHROPOGENIC HEAVY METAL SOURCES, GUANAJUATO MINING DISTRICT, CENTRAL MEXICO
CARRILLO-CHÁVEZ, Alejandro1, MORTON-BERMEA, Ofelia2, GONZÁLEZ-PARTIDA, Eduardo1, RIVAS-SOLORZANO, Hilda3, and OELSNER, Gretchen4, (1) Unidad de Ciencias de la Tierra, Inst. de Geología, UNAM, Carr. Qro-SLP, km 15, Juriquilla, Queretaro, 76230, Mexico, ambiente@unicit.unam.mx, (2) Inst. de Geofisica, UNAM, Mexico, 45210, Mexico, (3) Calle Corregidora No. 487, Casa 16B, Col Miguel Hidalgo Tlalpan, Mexico, DF 14410, Mexico, (4) Department of Geology and Geophysics, Univ. of Wyoming, Laramie

The Guanajuato Mining District, located in central Mexico, has been exploited for silver and gold from quartz and calcite rich epithermal veins for more than 400 years. There are some 150 millions of tons of mine waste material scattered in a area of some 100 km2 around the city of Guanajuato. Most of the historic tailings piles undertake strong eolic and hydrologic erosion, besides the natural leaching during the rainy season (which can bring strong thunder storms and flash flows). There is public concern about possible contamination of the local aquifer with heavy metals (Fe, Mn, Zn, As and Se) derived from the mining tailings. We present here, a general description of the most important historic tailings piles, and their possible environmental problems associated.[b][b] However, experimental and field data indicate strong geochemical evidences that most of the mine waste material have very low possibilities for generation acid mine drainage (AMD) due to the high carbonates/sulfides ratio (12:1), and very low potential for leaching heavy metals into the groundwater system. Experimental and modeled geochemical data also indicate that natural processes, like metal adsorption onto Fe-oxy-hydroxides surfaces (>FeO-OH) control the mobility of dissolved metals in the environment. Finally, the strong possibility that some anomalous concentrations of Zn in groundwater wells are due to natural dissolution processes (natural background values) of deeper levels of the epithermal veins is investigated.[/b][/b]

GSA Annual Meeting, November 5-8, 2001
General Information for this Meeting
Session No. 151
Environmental Geoscience (Posters)
Hynes Convention Center: Hall D
8:00 AM-12:00 PM, Thursday, November 8, 2001