First off, you need to know what you are trying to remove. That will require a water test. Call your local water treatment facility to find out the name of a lab for testing. It may be that a carbon filter won't remove whatever is causing you water to be unclear. It could be sediment, or any number of dissolved materials. Are you on city or well water? How does your water taste? Is it cloudy or just colored? What color? Does it change if you let it sit? By the way, a softener does not add salt to your water and will not cause cloudiness. The salt is purely for regenerating the resin in the softener.

Jenny, Any update on what you ended up doing? I installed a whole house softener for hard water issues, but I have odor issues (sulfur and chlorine mostly). I'm leaning toward adding a charcoal filter before the softener. We also have RO in the kitchen and wet bars. Also, you could always just have another hole drilled for the RO faucet without replacing the granite slab. If you have an undermounted sink, the new hole is all you need. What did you end up doing?

asolo, sorry, I'm just a parrot here, have no idea what DH is talking about. He said it was the same principle, so I just wrote that. This is the info from the manual: It's a Whirlpool Model WHELJ1, Whirlpool Gold Central Water Filtration System. It has a clean rinse cycle, which lifts and expands the media bed to rejuvenate the media and then repacks the bed for continued use. During the clean-rinse cycle dirt, etc., is flushed down the drain. Valve drain requirements: Use a flexible drain hose and cut to length as needed. Recommended that filter system be installed near a drain. A drain is needed for the clean-rinse discharge water. A floor drain is preferred; however, a laundry tub, standpipe, etc., are other drain options. Leave an air gap of 1 1/2 inch between the hose and the drain. Thanks also, lazypup. Sounds like "indirect waste line" would be the right thing to do. We appreciate the help from both of you.

How about a follow up -- a way late follow up ... So the filter is supposed to be a whole home filter, because the city has super old pipes with a lot of sediment. However, the filter needs to be changes monthly, and my sister had no idea. She (unknowingly) let it go for years. It was so backed up that her house barely had water pressure. It should have been an easy fix when I went to help her, but the 100+ year old house had a faulty main shut off valve -- as well as the pre-filter valve being faulty. So she had to call a plumber to contact the city to shut off the water at the street/sidewalk. There was nothing I could have done from there, the city won't turn it off for a homeowner (unless they don't pay the bill, lol). She now gets 'subscribe and save' monthly filter deliveries from Amazon to remind her to change the filter. Luckily, the plumber was able to blow the back up sediment out of her pipes, and she didn't need any pipe replacement. Her water pressure is now back to the usual crummy-100-year-old-house water pressure, instead of the even worse pee dribble pressure that she had with the backed up filter and pipes. Thanks!