Many people are becoming increasingly concerned about the quality of the water that comes out of the taps in their homes. The quick and easy solution is to install a water filter on the tap that is used for drinking water, but for a large household this could mean many filters, adding up to a lot of money and ongoing maintenance costs. If this is the case, you may very well be better off installing a whole house water filtration system.

Cleaning up your drinking water isn't the only benefit you will get from having one of these filtration systems installed in your home. Most areas suffer from high levels of chlorine in their water supply. You may not realise it, but when you wash dishes in this water, the heat releases this chlorine into the air, that you end up breathing in as you do your dishes. The removal of this chlorine in your water will also help prevent a build up of soap scum on your dishes.

There are a few alternatives to purchasing and installing a whole house water filtration unit, however you will find that none of them are able to match the effectiveness and savings of these systems. At first glance you may disagree, as one of these systems can be quite expensive to purchase, but you need to consider the cost over time on a dollar per gallon basis. It may seem as though it would be a lot cheaper to just buy and drink bottled water. The prices of bottled water vary greatly, but the cheapest is around 80 cents a gallon, and getting quality water in a bottle is a real crapshoot, many of the brands being no better than the existing water that comes out of your tap.

Another alternative to whole house water filters is the water softener. These systems have become fairly controversial of late, however, as they are cleaned using salt that ends up in the waterways. In fact, many areas have outlawed water softeners for this reason. Regardless, when you factor in the expense of having to buy new salt all the time for these systems, you are still paying around 15 cents to the gallon of water. Additionally, the water produced by these systems is not suitable for watering indoor plants.

A whole house water system may be a bit of an expense up front, but over the lifetime of this system, with little or no maintenance needed, you will be paying as little as $0.002 cents per gallon of water. Furthermore, the water produced by these systems is of a much higher quality than any of the alternatives. There is no salt, chemicals or potassium used in this system, and no constant changing of filters.

To determine the right size water filter for you home, you need to work out approximately how many gallons per minute your household is likely to use at any given time. As a general rule of thumb, your average household of four occupants will use up to six gallons of water per minute, and it is this GPM that is used to specify whole house water filtration sizes. These systems are attached directly to your mains inlet, and should be installed by a professional plumber. You will also need access to power and the services of an electrician will be needed to finalize the installation.

Any good filter should pass the water through four different levels of filtration. The first stage occurs before the water even enters the filter itself, as it passes through an external cartridge attached to the larger system. This cartridge will remove the sediments from your water, so that they do not damage the system. Next, the water goes through an atomization process, which uses a fusion of zinc and copper to change the molecular structure of the chlorine in the water. The water then passes through a layer of large carbon granules and finally through a layer of smaller granules, quite often made up of coconut shells or something similar. By the time the water passes through these four stages of filtration, it is left sparkling clean and free from all impurities.

The cost of these whole house water filtration systems vary depending on their size. The smaller models will set you back around $500 - $700, while the larger ones can cost as much as $3,000 and even more for industrial or agricultural models. When purchasing, be sure to ask about warranties. You should expect that the media will need to be replaced after about 5 years, and many will have a separate warranty that takes this into account. The filtration system itself should last you at least ten years.