As someone well steeped in a medical and science background, I can't really recommend an ionized water system over RO. No offense. Of course all unstudied things remain a mystery, but sometimes there are reasons we don't study things, because they don't make a lot of sense. Water is an extraordinarily weak buffer. You can sway its pH by electrolysis, but upon contact with any small amount of acid or base, it will quickly lose whatever pH it has. Read, stomach acid vs ionized water... stomach acid wins. If your goal is better tasting water, then carbon may be fine. If you want to remove tasteless chemicals and toxins, maybe RO is for you. The claim that there are 80,000 chemicals and toxins in the water supply at one time or another is sort of like claiming that every once in a while somebody gets hit by a bus, or struck by lighting. Yes, they are very real things, like chemicals in water, that may cause harm. But living your life in fear of such things can make people do extreme things, and waste a lot of money. You are not going to stay in your house, and avoid all roads to avoid lighting and buses, nor should every house install an RO system "to be safe." If your city has a bad track record for maintaining its water, you live near a clearly unregulated pesticide production facility, or you live on a farm with a well that has fluctuating water quality, it may be that an RO system is for you for "safety reasons." I still maintain an RO system is for us water snobs that not only want better tasting water, but clear ice, clear tea, and better water for our plants and high maintenance fish....

Found good info and thought i would paste here. The i have a continues TDS on my RO input and output and my output is currently around 40 PPM. The Output feeds my Ice-maker and my Instant hot through copper pipes.... I was worried about corrosion and possible leaks and the below paste makes me feel better! Question: Will putting a whole-house reverse osmosis (RO) system on a house with copper pipe cause leaks? aquacareservice@embarqmail.com Answer: Will putting a whole-house reverse osmosis (RO) system on a house with copper pipe cause leaks? aquacareservice@embarqmail.com The simple answer to your question is yes. Copper plumbing that is exposed to RO water will cause pitting; however, the question begs for a more thorough explanation of whole-house RO. To begin with, when most people hear the term RO, they think of water that has had the mineral salts reduced by 99 percent. While this is good for life support water, this is not practical for domestic,whole-house, working water. It is good to keep in mind that the water for this type of application should have a finish TDS of 50-100 ppm. The product water off the membrane should pass through a small column of calcite or equivalent product, or it can be treated with soda ash to neutralize the acidic nature of the water to a less corrosive state. Bear in mind that these products must meet the NSF standard for food service. In addition to neutralizing the acid, calcite will add calcium carbonate to the water. If the water being treated by the RO still contains hardness, then an acid feed is generally needed to drop the pH to increase the solubility of the hardness. This will allow the membrane to reject high levels of hardness while preventing scaling. Therefore, passing the water through a softener to remove any remaining hardness is a very efficient way to provide the kind of working water that most homeowners would like in the first place. Gary Battenberg, Technical Director, Hague Quality Water International As a rule of thumb, if the TDS (total dissolved solids) concentration of the RO water is above 10 ppm (almost all is >10), it should not be aggressive enough to dissolve copper and cause leaks.

Your missing part is a FLOW RESTRICTOR and should be replaced when ever the membrane is replaced. It regulates the water flow to drain, not air. If the old one is still in there you can remove the old one and clean it carefully... it clogs with debris. The shut-off valve pictured above is exactly that... a shut-off valve. It installs in the tubing that supplies water to the RO so you can sht-off the water going to the RO in case you need to service the RO... as you do now. If the tubing that supplies water to the RO is 1/4" PE then you need a 1/4" shut-off valve. If the tubing that supplies water to the RO is 3/8" PE tubing then you need a 3/8" shut-off valve. Home Depot carries them. Also. mind what I said about a saddle valve. If the line supplying water to the RO is hooked up with a saddle valve REPLACE it with a conventional connection. Saddle valves will leak sooner or later and are a giant water leak waiting to happen. If any of this confuses you, then get help. This is important.

Hi Mule Meat What does "lead reduction" mean? I'm not trying to be an ass, but when you are talking about water treatment, there are a ton of claims and you really have to be specific. Particularly when you are talking about lead. I know that there are cartridges out there that make this claim - this filter is not unique. I've tried to tie down those some of those claims to something specific - like NSF 53 or 58 and can't. Here is the list of NSF 53 - 58 filters. There are a few commercial ones listed at 6000 gallons and 2.5 gpm and one listed for just under 6000 gal and 5.6 gpm - which is better than I was able to find a few years ago. The vast majority are under 1 gpm. At 1 gpm and less you are really talking about a drinking water filter or ice maker filter. 2.5 gpm is the flow rate of a shower - those are not at all common. At 6000 gallons, these would require replacing about every 2 months in a "whole house" use based on an average daily water use of 90 gal per day. The filter that you linked to is not on the list either as the complete unit or the cartridge. based on what I'm seeing, it looks like the point-of-use situation has improved for NSF 53 filters - which is what we were talking about. The whole-house situation is not really workable though.