Water Troubles (Yet Again)

The water here has been a little suspect in our home. Oliver heard from some people at work that it may not be the healthiest thing in the world. He kind of freaked me out when he came home and told me this a couple months ago. I mean, we've lived here for a year now, and due to the hot climate are drinking a lot more water than we used to. To switch to bottled water would be ridiculously expensive, not to mention all the plastic waste that would engender. So, I decided not to do anything different. I hadn't, after all, seen any real evidence that it was making us or anyone else sick. A rumor is as likely to be untrue as it is to be true, so it wasn't much to go on.

Then, a few weeks ago, after all that crazy rain we had, our water started smelling a little bit like sewage. It was awful; at one point, I washed out a frosting decorating bag and the smell left behind was enough to make me feel ill. So, we pulled out our stored water and stopped drinking from the tap for awhile.

The stink only lasted a couple days, but that was long enough for me. I went online, did some research, and ordered a water filter for the kitchen. I got one that is a bit more powerful than your typical faucet filter (we did have a Brita filter back in Washington because the water there tasted awful). It hooks up to our faucet, with the filter unit sitting on the counter. They also had one that would have fit into our sprayer hole and been a separate faucet, but I didn't want to mess with the plumbing here. It's ancient and temperamental, like just about everything else.

Here's a very unprofessional pic of our set up:

 And a closeup of the faucet connector:

Also, because the water in our new place smells very strongly of chlorine (when it doesn't smell of sewage, ha), I also bought a shower filter. From what I've read in the past, it's possible to aspirate a lot of chlorine in the shower, so I figured it was time to stop worrying about that, too.

Here's a pic of that one:

The shower wand was part of it, with the filter unit being the big white thing hanging behind it. Supposedly, this is also going to keep our shower from getting so much soap scum because it's softening the water. We've only used it a couple of weeks so I don't know for sure if this is the case, but so far, so good in the soap scum department. For a lazy cleaner like me, this is a good thing.

We picked these up from Aquasana, in case you were curious. I don't know if they are the best, but they had good reviews and were in my price range, so that's why I went with them. Also, they will ship to us for free, which is a huge plus. That is not so easy to find these days.