Because we live in the country, we are on a well system for our drinking water. Because I grew up in the city, I cannot STAND the taste of well water! Our lovely well is off the charts when it comes to Iron, Sulfur and Sediment. Initially, we used a bottled water service and would go through 3 five gallon jugs a month. For years we used this service. It was nice, but I hated the eyesore water cooler in my kitchen. So I convinced my Mr. to purchase a under the counter reverse osmosis filtration system. Not a cheap investment! The unit alone cost $150.00, and the filters are roughly $40.00, and depending upon how bad ones water is, depends on how often they need to be replaced.
For the first half a year the unit worked great! We could have on demand drinkable water without waiting for the water guy! Then, this lovely POS developed a constant "gurgle" coming from the spicket. This loud gurgle would get so annoying that I ended up putting a band-aide over it just to quiet it! But of course then I was stopping the vacuum that it needed in order to work. And then it wouldn't dispense water anymore. So were were forced to buy gallon jugs of water from the local store. What an ordeal!!!
I had been noticing that our holding tank was needing to be pumped non stop. Every 3 weeks I would have to call the septic company and pay $60.00 to have them come pump the tank. I was on red alert for water conservation! OK, more like I was the "Water Bitch" and would harp at anyone I thought was wasting too much water. My laundry would pile up because I was concerned about filling the holding tank, my own personal showers were limited, and I kept an eye on how much water I used for our dishes.
A year after having this filter, I was doing some shopping on the net for a whole house water filtration systems when I read an article about how much water those reverse osmosis filters waste. I learned that it constantly trickles clean water down my drain. Now this wouldn't be a big issue for a normal household, but our waste water goes into our small 2,000 gallon holding tank!
Sure enough, the more I read about this filter system- The more I learned where my issues were coming from.
So... (being my anal self) I decided to figure out exactly how much water this thing was chucking down the drain.
My Mr. and I pulled off the drain line and put it into a bucket and timed for 1 minute how much water came out. Here are the results:
In 1 minutes time, we collected 1 1/4 (1.25)cups of water.
That translates to:
75 cups of water per hour. (Or 4.69 Gallons per hour)
That's 112.56 gallons of water per day.
and 3,380 gallons of water in a 30 day month.
Can you believe those numbers?? Talk about UNREAL! No wonder I was having a such a problem with filling up my holding tank so fast! Needless to say, that thing is GOING! Back to bottled water we go!
