What to consider about cost when buying 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

This varies greatly, according to the type and complexity of water purifier you choose. The determining factor for your choice of system should be the range of pollutants you need to get rid of from your water. You should collect this information beforehand, either through the annual water quality report provided to you by your utility, or through a private test that you can get from a water testing laboratory.

As a general rule, the more the contaminants you want your installed system to remove, the more complicated your set up will become. What you will probably end up requiring is a multi stage system possibly combining different technologies. As you realize, each stage introduced will mark up your initial cost.

In order to give you a flavor of the prices you should expect, let me say that a simple one stage carbon filter can start from $25, while more complex water purification systems consisting of redox, UV and carbon filters can have a tag price starting from $400 up to $800.

Set Up Cost

More often than not, the initial price quoted does not include installation cost. This is because within a given type of water purification system different models may or may not require installation; many of them just sit on a counter top or snap onto a faucet and are ready to use.

If a water purifier does require installation, it can often be done by anyone who is handy with basic tools. If a professional installs it, expect a cost of $100 to $200 beyond the purchase price, depending on the complexity of the installation.

At any rate, always clarify with the company whether purchase price includes installation as well.

Running cost

Last but not least in my list of the cost parameters you should consider, comes the running cost of operating the water purification system. Typically, its unit of measure is cost per gallon of water produced (usually in the range of 6 to 25 dollar cents) and for its calculation it takes into account the money spent on replaceable parts plus any operating cost (electricity and water bill etc.).

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.

To illustrate my point that you shouldn't base your decision to buy a water purifier on initial price alone, I will give you an example. While pour through pitcher filters are the cheapest in terms of tag price, they have the highest ongoing cost per gallon. This is due to the fact that their filters need frequent replacement. As a rule of thumb, the larger the filter the more expensive it is to buy, but the cheaper it is to maintain.

To conclude, what's very important to do before you start thinking about the cost is to establish what you want your water purification system to achieve in terms of two things: Firstly, the type and number of contaminants it should eliminate and secondly by how much it should remove them.

Therefore, I will repeat what I mentioned earlier: It is very crucial that you obtain a report about the composition of your tap water in terms of contaminants, before you start your water purifier selection process.

Once you establish that all of the systems you consider buying are capable of eliminating the contaminants that exist in your water, then you can proceed to select the one that has the least cost of ownership.

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