deedee, The size, type, and complexity of the equipment required will be dependent on... 1. What is in the water that needs to be treated. 2. Number of people in your home. 3. SFR and plumbing requirements. Without knowing all three variables there is no way to even ball park what you'll need. Could be as little as $500 or a few thousand. How about this... Get a water test from an independent lab. An independent lab has no agenda and won't be trying to sell you water treatment equipment. Go to http://www.epa.gov/safewater/labs/index.html to locate a certified lab near you. This is a MUST DO because without it everything is a guess. A quickie water test from Sears or a water softener company won't be as accurate (and possibly not as competent) as from a certified independent lab. Hit the Yellow Pages and call at least three local water treatment pros. Make sure you call at least one of the big dogs like Kinetico or Culligan for comparison and at least a couple independent pros. DON'T TELL THEM YOU HAD YOUR WATER TESTED. Give each an opportunity to offer suggestions and provide you with a quote to meet your water treatment needs. IGNORE ANY THAT DON'T TEST YOUR WATER THEMSELVES as they can't speak intelligently to water treatment without knowing what needs to be treated. Ask lots of questions. Softening the entire house or just the water heater (bad idea)? Warranty, parts & labor or just parts, how long and on exactly what? Install, permits required, licensed plumber? Routine maintenance and costs? Do they stock parts? Response time for emergency (water leak) calls? If they don't explain things to your satisfaction that is a good indicator of how you'll be treated after the sale. After they've gone use your water test to compare with theirs. Are all your treatment needs being addressed? Ask your neighbors if they have any water treatment experience. They might tell you who's good or who to avoid. Come back here and post the specific recommendations and hardware components with the costs and we'll give you our opinions.

Hey Jake maybe I can be a little more clear on the Pure Water Appliance, and a little more helpful as I am more technically involved with the system and its design. First off there is no "magic sauce" or even a one size fits all approach with our unit. The machine is 3 compartmented so we can use a multitude of medias inside of our unit for different purposes. For instance in the state of Texas we use 85 different configurations of medias in this unit depending on the water it will be treating. When you ask what medias we use in the system the answer is quite a few of them. This solely depends on where the machine is going, and what it will have to remove to make drinking water in the whole house. That being said there are instances where the machine will not function 100% and in those instances we either add peripheral equipment to ensure the water quality going into the home. I.E a bad sulfur well, or a high TDS situation, or we simply will decline the use of the Pure Water Appliance. We DO NOT put the unit anywhere it will not function properly. That is why in the 4 years this thread has been operational it has not been flooded with bad reviews, and horror stories. Quite simply put if there is a problem with our unit it is simply fixed at no cost to our customers in any fashion. We actually guarantee our unit for 10 full years, and that covers everything on or in our unit including medias. So if our machine has a failure at 9 years 11 months, lets say either the second compartment, or third and the medias are no longer viable, then we simply replace the unit free of charge. No trip fee and no labor charge at all. Just to be clear the cost of replacing the unit at 9 years 11 months and 30 days is $0.00 usd . There is no company in the United states that can say that at all. Another thing I would like to add is that of course we design each compartment with proper space to expand and clean the medias properly. We actually use some ingenious flow screens that lift the beds evenly allowing us to clean more efficiently with less space. If you can lift a resin bed evenly you can reach your needed expansion in a smaller space. Also we use almost every media there is in the book redox, absorption, Ion exchange, filtration, you name a media that actually does what it is designed to do and we have probably used, or at least tested it's viability for use in our system. The way we build our units is off of proper testing of the water we will be treating, in all cities in Texas it is mandatory that they send water analysis reports to the state twice a year from multiple points of use in their water systems. We simply look at the water analysis reports for the last 20 years, make a projection of how we see the water changing, and design the system to the best of our ability for the next 20 years. We also recommend to our well customers that they have a full analysis done from a third party laboratory so we can build them exactly what they need, we offer our own base line testing, but anytime any one has their own well we always recommend labs off the TCEQ approved testing facilities. Does this machine work in every situation? absolutely not that's why if the machine wont work properly we either give an alternative set up that will take care of our customers problems, or recommend companies in their local area that can take care of them properly. We just design a system as bullet proof as we can, and back it with a non prorated warranty to protect and take care of our customers. No magic, no gimmicks just honest over the phone pricing, and proper service for our people. I'm sure this post wont be sufficient for you as I'm almost convinced you are a competitor hell bent on bashing our company. That is fine we know the warranty we have, we know the service we provide, and we will always take care of our customers, and even take care of customers that have been abandoned by shady inexperienced companies. We have been here for 37 years and will continue to be here for the foreseeable future.

A reverse osmosis system for whole house would be huge and wasteful. Depending on your needs, many install a whole house filter, and then install point-of-use systems. Reverse osmosis for kitchen use is typical. It depends on your water quality.

Normally I'm an advocate for a "big Blue" housing and a cartridge filter - but I was alerted to the Everpure EF-6000 which is a very good choice for your application. See this discussion on a Full flow filter. The replacement filters are $60 and should last a year.