What can you learn from a reverse osmosis water treatment comparison? Like other consumer opinions, reverse osmosis reviews provide limited information. Either the homeowner is happy or not. If they are not, they don't suggest options. Here, you can learn what the common problems are, why they are problems, and what the better options are.

The most frequent complaint that you will see in a reverse osmosis water treatment comparison concerns the costs. The equipment is expensive to purchase and maintain. It requires electricity to operate and often a new outlet must be installed. It creates gallons of wastewater and often a new drain must be installed.

For less than $1000, you can purchase a whole house carbon and sediment filter. It takes a plumber less than two hours to install, does not require electricity and does not create wastewater. The maintenance costs average out to less than $18 per month.

Another complaint that you will see in reverse osmosis reviews has to do with bad tasting water. People say that they can still taste chlorine, which means that they system does not include carbon filtration. They sometimes say that the water tastes stale. That's because reverse osmosis removes naturally occurring minerals. Without them, the water is basically tasteless.

To get the best tasting water, an ideal solution is a multi-stage system that you attach to your kitchen tap. If the system includes ion exchange, it will balance mineral content and pH levels, remove lead, copper and other metallic particles, without reducing any naturally occurring mineral content.

One other complaint that you often see in reverse osmosis reviews concerns breakdowns, particularly in areas where sand or sediment content is very high. The delicate membranes within the units tear very easily. Pre-filtration is necessary to protect them. The cheaper self-contained units that are designed for homeowners will not work for wells that have salt, sand or other granular contaminants.

So, if you do have these problems, when you do a reverse osmosis water treatment comparison, look at other options. You can almost always find a better, less expensive option. If you are serviced by a public treatment facility, you don't need to waste your time reading reverse osmosis reviews. The purification step is unnecessary. If you're worried about cysts, submicron filtration can handle that, for a much lower price.

If you do a whole house reverse osmosis water treatment comparison, you will see that those designed for well owners cost in the $10,000 range. Those designed for homes on a public waterline cost as much as $6000. I believe that everyone needs a home purifier, because there is only so much that large-scale treatment facilities can do.

I also think that everyone should know that purification is affordable, something they won't learn by reading reverse osmosis reviews. A kitchen purifier is by far the least expensive, but most effective alternative. When you do a reverse osmosis water treatment comparison to multi-stage selective filtration, reverse osmosis always loses.