Beam UV Rays, Boil or Filter

A number of technologies are relied upon in a housing water filter. These technologies are quite expensive and have been available for years now but only recently have there been advancements in trying to reduce cost to meet the demands of working class families in North America and Europe. They are still too expansive to be used in a widespread fashion across the rest of the world. Home drinking water purification has made major inroads by taking the technologies used in the past and making them compact enough to fit beneath your sink. This technology has been made so compact that it can even fit into water bottle purifiers making it possible to have clean water wherever you go.

Desalination Plants

Desalination plants all over the world have been helping to provide fresh water to people from many different countries with the use of distillation. 12 billion gallons of clean water is provided each year by this form of purification according to the Wall Street Journal in early 2008. This technology is still considered to be relatively new even though it provides enough drinking water for 66 million coastal dwellers every year. Prior to the technology becoming advanced enough to work on a small scale, it used to consume a ton of energy but now it has become advanced enough to perform for home drinking water purification.

There are more advanced techniques available for housing water filter systems if that prospect doesn’t excite you. Another purification technology that is practical and cheap to maintain is UV purification. This technology works by simply bombarding the water with UV rays which kill any tiny organisms or bacteria that may be present in your water. This along with a water softener to remove minerals and metals provides a cheap alternative to the purification system mentioned above.

Reverse Osmosis

The latest technology to hit the housing water filter market is known as reverse osmosis. This technology is very effective as it uses water pressure to force water through a very fine filter, filtering even the tiniest pollutants in your water and it has been used in recent years to purify bottled water before shipping it out to customers. Filtering rates for this system vary in the 30-45 gallons per day range, providing enough water to drink, wash the clothes and foods but not enough to take several baths. However, it is still an economical and healthy system to use. Any of these housing water filter systems will certainly provide a much healthier and cleaner water supply for you and your family.

To minimize the travel required by those affected by the disaster portable water purification units are moved around in communities. People may want to work on cleaning up the mess caused by heavy flooding or following massive storms and have to travel long distances and haul back gallons of water for drinking during those difficult times. It is good to count on portable water purification systems for good clean water until public utilities are restored. If notr many communities will lack their usual water supply.

Many people have an adequate supply of clean water and can use portable water purification systems to remove bacteria from their well water on a smaller scale. While it may be safe to boil drinking water, the taste is not the same. Small parasites that live in water can be removed by the use of portable water purification devices when the need arises.



Clean Water for Remote Job Sites

Finding that portable water purification units can provide workers with clean, safe water on the job especially with some construction companies that build in remote areas. Drawing water from a local source, a portable water purification unit can then provide all the safe water the workers need, instead of the company or the workers having to load their vehicles down with gallons from a distance.

Using a deluxe portable water purifier to meet their needs, water users do not have to waste their time pass water through a filtering system and then through a portable water purification. Doing all the work and giving out clean, fresh water on the other end, these units are under strict control to deliver once the questionable water is added to the first section of the unit.

Especially for larger quantities of water, a steady supply of unfiltered water connected to the initial filtering section of these units provides a steady stream of clean water that make this type of portable water purification system very convenient.

"Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans".-Jacques Cousteau (1910)

The problem with this is that there are lots of contaminants that do not get filtered out of the water. In addition to some bacteria and other microorganisms tough enough to survive water purification, trace elements of over 2,100 toxic, cancer-causing chemicals can be found in the water from an average drinking fountain. The long list includes (among many others) lead, mercury, antibiotics, growth hormones, a wide range of pharmaceutical medicine (including antidepressants and birth control), industrial cleaning, manufacturing chemicals, agricultural fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.

Health Dangers

One could argue that all these chemicals in our drinking water are harmless. They are only trace elements, after all, measured in parts per million, how much danger could consuming a small dose really pose? If you drank only a single glass of water, virtually none. The problem, however, is that we drink water from birth to death. Over the course of decades, those trace elements of toxic chemicals build up in our bodies until they can become harmful. A hundred years ago, one person in fifty developed cancer during their lifetime. Today, one person in three will develop cancer. Many things have caused that dramatic increase, but the contaminants in our drinking water are almost certainly a factor.

Given these facts, one would expect Americans to demand an upgrade of the national water purification system and provide safe drinking water to the general public. Water treatment companies, however, argue—rather reasonably—that only 1% of a household's water is used for human consumption. The other 99% is used in showers, sinks, toilets, laundry machines, water the grass and wash cars. Why spend huge amounts of money upgrading the water treatment infrastructure to purify ALL the water from the national water purification system companies are asking. The other question is why bother when only a tiny fraction of that water actually ends up in the human body? This argument has won out for decades, and there is no sign of the situation changing any time soon.

What To Make Sure Of

What this means is that if you want to make sure you are drinking pure, clean water, you need to filter and purify it yourself. There are many different types of commercial water filter technologies and designs. Distillation and reverse-osmosis filtering technologies is the most effective and very popular right now.

In addition to filtering out toxic chemicals, they also filter out some of the healthy minerals and nutrients found in drinking water, such as calcium, potassium, and magnesium. Carbon water filters strike a better balance between filtering out harmful chemicals while leaving the healthy minerals intact. Something else to look for in a water filter is one that uses a multi-stage filtration process. Water filters that only run the water through on a single pass may not eliminate all the bacteria and contaminants from the water.

Another concern is the design of water filters. The three most common designs are the filtered water pitcher, the faucet nozzle filter, and the undersink filter. Although ultimately which type of filter you choose is up to your personal taste and preference, some are better than others. Filtration pitchers can only produce a set amount of water at one time, instead of filtering a continuous stream of water from the tap. Faucet nozzle filters also achieve this, but many find them bulky, cumbersome and awkward to use.

Undersink filters and undersink water filtration systems have emerged as some of the most popular water purification systems for several reasons. These systems provide a continuous flow of water, is out of sight under the sink, relatively simple to install, easy and convenient to use.