I’ve been working on a research project to get The Best Possible Water Filter for our in-house drinking water…and I finally found one that meets all of my requirements!
Here’s the short of it: The Clearly Filtered Clean & Safe 3-Stage Under-the-Sink Filter System is my winner. It costs $500 for the system (including shipping and the first set of filters), then about $340 per year to replace filters. You can buy it using this link – you’ll save 25% and I’ll save on my future filter purchases.
The 5-Minute Summary:
- It installs under the kitchen sink (attached to the cold water faucet) and takes just 20 minutes to set up
- You don’t need to drill a hole in your sink or set up another faucet.
- It’s pretty effective for a small space!
- Doesn’t take up space on the counter like a gravity-fed filter or take up a crazy amount of space under the sink like reverse osmosis systems.
- Doesn’t need to be constantly refilled like pitcher systems.
- Doesn’t need electricity – it runs on water pressure alone.
Already sold? You can grab the filter system using an affiliate link I set up with Clearly Filtered, which will save you $125 on your filter system!
Want to know more? Keep reading for the in-depth notes on water contaminants, filter types, pricing, and water test results.
WATER CONTAMINANTS
Step 1 in getting a water filter: What are you trying to remove from your water?
Something I quickly realized is that not answering this question is flying blind. There are so, so, SO many water filters available with many different processes, installation methods, claims, and costs that I was drowning in a sea of options pretty quickly.
So, how do you know what exactly is in your tap water? There are several ways to find out. You can order a water test kit and send it to a lab – this will give you the most detailed and precise results. These cost between $200-300 per test and the amount of return data can potentially be more than you need.
I decided to start with a simpler water report: the local Board of Public Utilities annual water report. All cities have these as it’s mandated by the EPA. You can find it for your city easily, just Google “[city name] annual water quality report”
In our area, water is typically coming from mountain reservoirs and springs, instead of sewage treatment plants, meaning that it can have lower levels (or no detects at all) of difficult-to-remove contaminants like pharmaceuticals and synthetic hormones.
Still, there’s plenty of gross stuff in the water, even when it’s below the EPA limits. Even “clean” city water commonly contains heavy metals (lead, copper, aluminum), fluoride, chlorine and cancer-contributing byproducts of water chlorination, radionuclides, and more. Below you’ll see a table of the water contaminants I wanted to remove from our drinking water.
| Lead | HAA5: |
| Copper | Monochloroacetic Acid |
| Aluminum | Dichloroacetic Acid |
| Fluoride (sodium fluorosilicate) | Trichloroacetic Acid |
| Chlorine & chloramines | Monobromoacetic Acid |
| Nitrate (as nitrogen) | Dibromoacetic Acid |
| TTHM: | Radionuclides: |
| Chloroform | Gross Alpha |
| Bromoform | Radium 226 |
| Bromodichloromethane | Radium 228 |
| Dibromochloromethane | Uranium |
| Sulfate | Barium |
| Total organic carbon |
Okay, great! Now I knew exactly what I wanted to remove from the water. Onto Step 2: What type of filter system to get?
SELECTING A WATER FILTER
There are so many types of water filters available! I read and sorted through about a hundred different blog posts, water filter comparisons, individual water filter detail sheets and water test reports. I spoke with water filter sellers, distributors, and creators (plus tons of customer support staff) to get enough information to make an informed decision.
The thing that was ultimately the most helpful decision making tool was third-party water test results. Many water filter companies spike water with an army of common contaminants, run the water through their systems, then send it to a third-party lab to evaluate. Anyone can say “our filter removes copper!” so it adds a lot more credibility when there are independently published test results. I began eliminating companies who couldn’t provide third-party lab test results.
The Clearly Filtered Clean & Safe 3-Stage Under-the-Sink Filter System test results are available right on their website, which is a huge help in deciding. You can see the complete report right here on their website.
I went through this report (and about 10 others from different companies), comparing whether the filter system removed the major contaminants in our city water.
I spoke with the Water Quality Control Supervisor for our area to learn what type of fluoride is added to our city water (sodium fluorosilicate). I spoke with Clearly Filtered to make sure that their system, which reports 99.9% removal of fluoride, includes sodium fluorosilicate. It does! The only contaminant in the city water Clearly Filtered didn’t report on was haloacetic acids—apparently it wasn’t part of the lab test they ran.
Do haloacetic acids matter? Yep, here’s why:
Haloacetic acids (HAAs) are a type of chlorination disinfection by-product that are formed when the chlorine used to disinfect drinking water reacts with naturally occurring organic matter (NOM) in water. Haloacetic acids are a relatively new disinfection by-product.
SOURCE
Chlorination disinfection by-product…meaning, if your city tap water is chlorinated, there is a high chance there are HAAs in it.
The Environmental Protection Agency has classified the acid as a Group 2B cancer classification, which means it may cause cancer in humans. Experiments on mice exposed to varying levels of haloacetic acid showed an increase in the development of liver tumors and liver cancer. Exposure to high levels of haloacetic acid also may increase the risk of birth defects.
SOURCE
HAAs are bad for humans, babies, and mice. Sure, the dose makes the poison—but why have any of this in your water, if you can easily install a system that removes it? So, back to the Clearly Filtered system:
I saw that other filter systems of the same type (multi-stage with carbon block) could effectively remove haloacetic acids, and I thought the Clearly Filtered system might as well. I ordered the system and then ordered a water lab test kit to find out. You can read about the results further on in this post—but, spoiler alert—it does!
Other Water Filter Systems
I won’t bore you with EVERY type of water filter system I evaluated, but I think it’s worthwhile to talk a little about reverse osmosis systems since they’re so popular and can be really effective.
FUNCTION:
These work by pushing water through a membrane with teeny, tiny holes in it (think like a strainer for water). The contaminant particles are too large to get through the membrane, so only water comes out. This is a super simplified explanation but there is a lot of readily available information online if you want to learn more about RO.
PROS:
They remove a long list of contaminants from water, so they’re great when you’re trying to remove a wide variety, or very small particles, from your water.
CONS:
They can be noisy. They require both in-line water and an electric power source, and they use about 3 gallons of water for every 1 gallon they filter. They take up a lot of under-sink space. They need ongoing maintenance to ensure bacteria doesn’t build up on the membrane and re-contaminate your water. RO also removes trace minerals present naturally in water, which some people think can create a negative impact on the body.
Reverse osmosis does not remove chlorine, trihalomethanes, or volatile organic chemicals (VOCs). Many reverse osmosis systems include an activated carbon component than can remove these other contaminants. Quality can vary tremendously in both the membrane system and the carbon filter typically used with it.
SOURCE
WHY I DIDN’T BUY THIS
It would be overkill for our water. The set up and maintenance costs, extra space, extra noise, wasted water, and electricity needs didn’t make sense considering there was a much easier, simpler filter that could handle our water’s filtering needs. If our water had different contaminants that couldn’t be removed with activated charcoal and fluoride removal medium filters, I probably would have gone this route.
PRICING
Here’s how the pricing breaks down on the Clearly Filtered Clean & Safe 3-Stage Under-the-Sink Filter System.
First Year Costs
| INITIAL FILTER SYSTEM (includes shipping and filters) | $500 |
| 25% DISCOUNT FOR USING MY AFFILIATE LINK | -$125 |
| TIME IT TAKES TO INSTALL | ~20 min |
| FIRST YEAR TOTAL: | $375 |
Additional costs, Year 2 and Beyond
| SET OF REPLACEMENT FILTERS | $400 |
| 15% DISCOUNT USING AUTOSHIP | -$60 |
| TIME IT TAKES TO CHANGE FILTERS | ~5 min |
| 12-18 MONTH FILTER COST (AFTER FIRST YEAR): | $340 |
So, it’s $375 to get the system. It takes 20 minutes to install. You need to put in new filters every 2,000 gallons (or 18 months), so for an average household of 2-3 people, that’s $340 per year to replace filters. The filter replacement process takes about 5 minutes. Clearly Filtered has a convenient auto-ship set up on their website so you can have your filters arrive directly at your house every year without needing to remember.
I saw water filter systems anywhere from $300/year to $2000/year—like with most things, there is a wide range of prices, qualities, and reasons. I wanted to get the water filter system that did the following, in order of priority:
- Actually removed the contaminants in our water
- Required the least maintenance/fuss to install and keep up with
- Cost the least to maintain, after it met Criteria 1 & 2
INSTALL & MAINTAIN
The system is very easy to install and should take less than 15 minutes using household tools. You simply turn off the water supply to your faucet, attach the new hoses and system to sit in-line from the supply to the faucet and then turn the water back on. It’s as simple as it gets.
From the Clearly Filtered website
This matches up with my experience. This system is compatible with any standard 3/8″ cold water line. You’ll want to have some rags on hand to soak up any water that drips out of the lines (after you turn the water off and disconnect the cold water line), an adjustable crescent wrench, some plumber’s tape, and probably a flashlight or headlamp so you can see what you’re doing!
As far as maintenance, you don’t need to do anything besides change all three filters every 9-18 months (again, it’s dependent on your water use). This takes about 5 minutes.
WATER TEST RESULTS
Because Clearly Filtered didn’t have any test data about whether their system could remove haloacetic acids, I ordered a third-party lab test from National Testing Laboratories Ltd.
Their CityCheck Deluxe tests for 114 contaminants. The test costs $260 plus return 2-day shipping. It takes a few weeks to ship out, and another couple weeks for them to email out the water quality report. Completing the test is simple. You just fill the included bottles and vials with the water you want to test, add an ice pack to the cooler, and ship it off.
Right away, the test showed that our filter system was removing 100% of free and total chlorine. This part of the test is conducted at home, and it’s cool to see proof of the filter system working right away!
It took about six weeks to receive our lab test results, but ultimately it was worthwhile to know that our Under-the-Counter filter system is effectively removing haloacetic acids from our water. The report showed No Detects (ND) for each of the five acids, shown below. The report also showed removal rates consistent with the lab tests from Clearly Filtered for all the other contaminants they tested against.
CONCLUSION
Clearly Filtered says their contaminant removal results are good to 2,000 gallons. While we shouldn’t need to replace our filters for 18 months based on our usage, I’m planning to test our system again at 12 months just to see how it’s holding up.
Think this filter might be good for you, too? You can save $125 on the system when you use my affiliate link below (plus help me earn free filters!).
If you have any questions or suggestions for systems you think are better, I’d be happy to hear from you!
Affiliate Disclosure: This post uses an affiliate link for the Clearly Filtered website. If you buy a product on their site, I’ll earn points towards free water filters. It doesn’t add anything to the product prices. I am not endorsed by Clearly Filtered; all opinions and research here are my own.
Less Toxic Life 