The Disadvantages Of Reverse Osmosis Water Filters

Reverse osmosis water filters were the only method that was once available to provide purified water to your home. Better, more cost effective and efficient systems have since been introduced, and yet water companies still push the old system over the newer technology. There are many disadvantages to reverse osmosis systems, as we highlight below.

Why Are They Still Sold?

Although there are far cheaper and more effective water filters available on the market today, some people are still led to believe that a reverse osmosis system is the best way to filter the water to their homes.

This is largely due to a lot of marketing dollars spent by the larger water companies selling the units, and the fact that they do a very good job for certain applications such as removing the salt from sea water leaving it suitable for use in irrigation and industry. They do remove many of the harmful contaminants present in drinking water; however this is where the plus points start to run a little thin.

The Waste

One of the major disadvantages of reverse osmosis systems is the huge amount of waste-water that is flushed down the drain in order to produce a small amount of purified water.

Many using a septic system for their waste water have to upgrade to larger sizes because the tank couldn’t cope with the amount of waste-water it was accumulating. For example, between 40 to 90 gallons of waste-water is produced in order to give the householder just 5 gallons of purified drinking water. This is an unnecessary and flagrant waste of a precious commodity.

Power

This particular system needs plenty of power in order to turn waste water in to that which is drinkable. Certainly when you take into consideration the ratio of waste water to make drinking water a lot of electricity is required and this is not only bad for your home electricity bills but for the environment as well.

Is Water Safer To Drink When You Use A Reverse Osmosis System

This is the most important question when considering purchasing any water filtration system, and especially so when buying one that is as costly and expensive to install and operate.

Well, the answer is that this system makes the water safer to drink, but not necessarily safe. It does a competent job certainly, but no better than the considerably cheaper systems employing more economical methods to filter water without all the whistles and bells whilst doing so.

Simply because one of its major disadvantages is that reverse osmosis systems do not actually eradicate all the chemical contaminants and cysts that can be found in water today.

In fact one manufacturer freely admits as much with a warning that these units are designed only to clean up aesthetic properties and don’t act as a barrier to waterborne microbiological and toxic chemicals.

One other very small but very important disadvantages of reverse osmosis filters is that they can also remove some or all of the minerals found in water. So knowing this you would be far better off using a much more inexpensive and efficient way to provide pure clean water for you and your family.