Clean drinking water is a relative term depending on which country you live in. For somebody living in a developing nation, clean water might mean parasite-free. In the developed world, clean water might be defined as not containing chlorine, fluoride, or residues from various agricultural chemicals or pharmaceuticals.
In the United States, we take clean drinking water for granted. You don’t expect to get sick from drinking a glass of tap water from your kitchen sink. Only in extreme circumstances do local authorities issue “boil warnings.”
The intent of this page & website, is not to scare you. My goal is to raise awareness of what you might be drinking and recommend you equipment that helps you drink cleaner, contaminant-free water.
My family is in pursuit of cleaner drinking water. It is the “gasoline” for our bodies & we do not want our engines to stop working before Mother Nature intended.
What Are You Drinking?
Do you know what’s in your water? Everybody will have a different answer for this question depending on (1) where you live & (2) your water supply. For example, you live in a semi-rural area. Your neighbor, who lives 2 acres away from you, uses a well for their drinking water source. You use the municipal water supply because you built your house after the local water department began servicing your street & it’s cheaper than drilling your own well.
From the start, you & your neighbor are going to have different water quality samples. Your municipal water has been chlorinated & most likely it has been fluoridated (69% of public water systems have fluoride added, although fluoride is a naturally occurring substance and might be present in wells too). Your neighbor’s well, might contain fertilizer or herbicide runoff whereas your water will not.
If your house is on a municipal water supply, you should be receiving a survey result every year that shows the presence level of various chemicals & residues in the water supply.
For those that have a well, your water is initially tested for bacteria (the primary litmus test for potable water) at the time of drilling and it should also show the presence of other chemicals as well.
Regardless of your water source, you can always pay to have your own drinking water tested for the presence of bacteria, heavy metals, & radiological elements. Depending on the type of test you desire, prices can range from approximately $100-$400.
How To Get Cleaner Water
There are two different approaches to getting clean & pure drinking water.
Option #1: You can use a point-of-use filter such as a counter top filtered pitcher (like Brita or Pur) or under-the-sink filtration. 
Option #2: Whole house filtration.
Depending on your budget or needs, pitchers & under-the-sink filters are the most economical. They will improve the water you use for drinking and cooking.
If you want all your water to be cleaner, including what you use to shower or bathe in, a whole house filter will meet your needs. Most people often overlook the fact that they are drinking filtered drinking water, but their skin is absorbing all these chemicals in the shower.
Different Filtration Methods
Here is a brief summary of the three most common filtration methods:
- Distilled Water
- The water is boiled & the steam is collected to create the drinking water. The problem with this chemicals with lower boiling points than water also evaporated with the steam & you have probably lost minerals like calcium, magnesium, and iron.
- Water may be tasteless due to lack of minerals.
- The water is boiled & the steam is collected to create the drinking water. The problem with this chemicals with lower boiling points than water also evaporated with the steam & you have probably lost minerals like calcium, magnesium, and iron.
- Carbon Filtration
- Considered by the EPA to be the most effective method to remove chlorine and other contaminants.
- There are two different types of carbon filters
- Activated Granular Carbon (Loose Carbon)
- The type of carbon in Brita & Pur water filters
- Powdered Block Carbon (Solid Carbon)
- More effective than loose carbon at removing contaminants & removes more types of contaminants than loose.
- Activated Granular Carbon (Loose Carbon)
- Reverse Osmosis
- Water passes through a semi-permeable membrane & the most “complete” filtration system but is also the slowest filtration process.
- Negative aspect of Reverse Osmosis is that trace minerals cannot pass the membrane so the water is stripped of all nutrients.
- If you want these minerals, you need to add minerals back in. The easiest method is adding 1 tsp. of Himalayan Sea Salt per gallon.
- Filtration process loses about 3 gallons of waste per filtered potable gallon. 🙁
- Negative aspect of Reverse Osmosis is that trace minerals cannot pass the membrane so the water is stripped of all nutrients.
- Water passes through a semi-permeable membrane & the most “complete” filtration system but is also the slowest filtration process.
Conclusion
This website will be posting content on everything about Pure Water. With the average American taking 13 prescriptions & the presence of various disinfection products and by-products, filtered water is becoming more important all the time.
For an easy go-to reference of terms for all things water, please visit the Glossary page!
