Tips on how to estimate cost when you buy a water purification system
Let’s face it; cost is always a big factor when you want to select a water purification system for your home. The subject is not as straightforward as it may seem at first. The way to approach it is not only to consider its purchase price, but rather its total cost of ownership.
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 contaminants you need to remove 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 rule of thumb, the complexity of your installation will rise as the range of contaminants you want to remove widens. Since none of the available water purifier technologies is able to remove all contaminants 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.
Just to give you an indication of the tag prices you could expect, there are simple granular carbon filters starting from just $25 and there are water purifiers combining UV, redox and carbon filters starting from $400 up to $800.
Installation cost
In most of the cases, water purification system manufacturers do not include installation cost in the purchase price. The simple explanation for this is that it is not always necessary for a system to require complicated set up. Many of them you can start using right away, either by putting on them on a counter top or by snapping them onto a faucet.
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.
To conclude on this issue, I have a suggestion to make: Always make sure with the company that is selling the purifier system you want to buy, whether the purchase price they publish includes installation cost or not.
Ongoing 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.
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. remove 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.
