If you're tired of shelling out hundreds of dollars a year for bottled water, or if you are looking for a cheap alternative to your not-so-great tap water, you should look into getting a drinking water filter. There are several different kinds of filters for sale today, each with pros and cons. One is certain to work well for your drinking water needs.

Basic activated carbon filters are the cheapest drinking water filter solution you'll find. These filters are sold at your local grocery store for less than $50 for the faucet connection and initial filters, and replacement filters are very inexpensive. The water from these filters is very good; they work by forcing ordinary tap water through layers of activated carbon. The carbon pulls impurities from the water as it passes through, retaining chlorine and bacteria while allowing purified, better-tasting water through. Your water comes out cleaner, and retains most of the healthful minerals like calcium that make drinking water so good for you.

A more expensive, but significantly superior, drinking water filter is the reverse osmosis filter. Installed under your counter, these systems originally developed for submarines take up a little space, but provide you with the cleanest possible drinking water without the flat taste of distilled water. They work by passing ordinary tap water through a series of very fine osmotic filters, allowing pure water to drip through while retaining all the impurities on the other side of the filter. While the drinking water reservoir fills slowly, it can provide you with several gallons of bottled-water-quality water every day. The contaminated water on the other side of the filter is washed from the filtration system regularly.

Using a reverse osmosis drinking water filter gives you plenty of bottled-water-quality drinking water for about five cents a gallon in most places, a significant cost savings when you consider what you pay for it at your supermarket. Water that is flushed from the system is still pure enough to spray on your garden and lawn, so if you have gray water storage there is no waste.

Though it's not quite a drinking water filter, you may have an ultraviolet filter added at the end of your reverse osmosis water filter, particularly in places that have contaminated water. A good UV filter will destroy any living contaminants, ensuring that your supply of water is as clean as possible. So the best reverse osmosis water filters actually have three different filters in a series to ensure the purity of your drinking water supply.

Similar to activated carbon drinking water filters is a ceramic water filter. These are based on the same ideas behind commercial water filtration, and use diatomaceous earth to remove contaminants from water passing through them in a similar fashion to activated carbon. The water that comes out is as good as water from an activated carbon filter.

Your perfect water filter depends on your tastes and budget. Spend a lot on bottled water? The osmotic is probably for you. Just want to filter out your tap water? A ceramic or carbon drinking water filter will probably be just fine.

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Trent Barrett is a consultant who writes for Home water purifiers. You can visit their homepage to learn more about home water purification systems