Harmful substances in your drinking water may be a serious health and safety concern for you and your family.  If you suspect your water supply is contaminated, there are things you can do to make sure it doesn’t flow from your own faucet.  There are several water filtration systems for the home that can remove most of these impurities in the water you use for drinking and cooking.  Reverse osmosis systems are one of these popular methods for cleaning up the water that comes out of your kitchen faucet.

A key component of a RO (reverse osmosis) system is the membrane.  This is where the hard job of preventing various poisonous substances from being sent out of the kitchen sink faucet takes place.  Any potentially harmful impurities such as bacteria, pesticides, chlorine, industrial wastes, asbestos or cadmium, is blocked by this barrier which only allows water molecules to pass through.  Contaminants are washed out into the drain.  The output of this process is almost 100% pure water.

The membrane isn’t the only critical component of the reverse osmosis system.  In addition, there is usually a pre-filter and a post filter that come before and after the membrane in the RO set up respectively.  The pre-filter blocks sediment such as sand, silt and dirt in the water from entering through.  There may be another pre-filter that uses carbon to remove chlorine which may have a negative effect on some types of membranes.  Then after the membrane there is usually a carbon post filter that eliminates any remaining odor or tastes in the purified water.

When you have looked at the alternatives to a reverse osmosis system for filtering your home drinking and cooking water and decided that having a RO installed is your best solution, then you should shop around for the system which uses high quality filters and membranes.  These are the two most critical components of the system and the level of quality in these parts is what makes one system better than another.  Less quality in these key components means performance will suffer, impurities will pass through and unnecessary downtime will have to be experienced.  Therefore, you must not let a bargain influence your buying decision, but rather purchase a RO system manufactured by a company with a good reputation and service.