Tips on how to estimate cost when you buy a water purification system
When you want to buy the best water purification system for your home, you are inevitably faced with the issue of cost. You need to investigate not only the initial purchase price, but also how expensive it is to maintain it.
What I will present to you in this article are the different cost parameters you should have in the back of your mind when doing your own research. I should mention that my analysis covers the four basic water purification technologies. These are: Reverse Osmosis, filters, distillers and ultraviolet units.
Purchase price
The cost to purchase a water purification system varies a lot. This depends primarily on the range of contaminants that you want to be eliminated from your water. So, I should stress the importance of knowing beforehand what is contained in it. Get the contaminants report that your water utility is obliged by law to distribute to the households it services once every year (if you are indeed connected to a public utility), or obtain a comprehensive report from a water test lab (if you are serviced by a private source).
As a rule of thumb, the complexity of your installation will rise as the range of pollutants you want to remove widens. Since none of the available water purifier technologies is able to remove all pollutants on its own, then most probably you will need a combination of technologies, each introducing an additional stage of water processing. As you realize, price goes up with increasing complexity.
To help you better estimate your required budget, let me give you some indicative prices: One single stage system with carbon filter is around $25, while a multi stage combination technology water purifier ranges from $400 up to $800.
How much to install it
What is common practice among water purification system manufacturers is to exclude any installation cost from the purchase price. This is attributed to the fact that many models in a given technology do not require any complicated set up whatsoever. More often than not, these are counter top models or just need to readily connect with a faucet.
If the installation of your system is a bit more involved, more often than not you can seek help from a person with minimum technical know how. In the case, however, that more technical skills are required, then a hired professional might cost anywhere from $100 up to around $200. The final cost depends on the modifications you need to make in your existing set up in your house as well as on the complexity of the water purification system itself.
At any rate, always clarify with the company whether purchase price includes installation as well.
Cost per gallon
The last element in the cost equation is the ongoing cost of ownership of the purifier, measured by how much (typically between 6 to 25 cents) it costs to produce one gallon of pure water. It includes the cost of replacing and installing whatever replaceable components each technology uses, as well as the cost of electricity needed to operate and the water bill.
Please note that the cost figure stated in the performance sheet of the system is based on certain assumptions, different for each technology. For example, it is assumed that filters will be replaced roughly once every six months, RO membranes once every two years and UV lamps once a year. Distillers do not have any replaceable components whatsoever, so their running cost is equal to what you pay for electricity and water. What is worthwhile to mention about RO units is that they need a lot of water to operate, so expect your water bill to be high in case you select this type of system.
As a general rule, bear in mind that, other things being equal, the higher the initial price of the system, the lower is the ongoing cost for replaceable parts. Larger and more complex systems tend to be of higher quality, thus reducing the need for frequent replacement. Therefore, my advice is that you shouldn’t rush to base your estimate of the cost of ownership on initial price alone, but rather in combination with the ongoing cost.
Having said the above, what’s very important to be clear about before you start considering the cost implications, is the level of effectiveness and efficiency that you want from your water purification system, based on your own set of circumstances. In other words, you want the system to be effective at removing the contaminants your water has and to do that efficiently, i.e. eliminate them as much as possible.
So, I will stress again that it is very important that you know what contaminants you want to remove, before you consider buying a water purifier.
Once you establish that all of the systems you consider buying are capable of eliminating the pollutants that exist in your water, then you can proceed to select the one that has the least cost of ownership.
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Written by Nicos Stylianou on August 13th, 2009 with
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