Does your water at home taste strange or do you have to hold your nose when you drink it? If you have either of these problems then you definitely need to investigate a good water filter. Water filters nowdays are super efficient at purifying water and providing great tasting, healthy drinking water. I guess your next question is what should I be looking for?
OK, lets evaluate the different home faucet water filters available. We can look at the inerds of a water filter and see why the PUR FM 9400 has been rated #1.
If you take apart a faucet water filter, its basic parts are:
(1) Some type of physical filter to catch particles coming from the water source or that have been picked up in the house piping. Now the filtering mechanism can get pretty complex ranging from a simple filter like you would use to filter your morning coffee (of course a lot more heavy duty) imagine a paper coffee filter rolled up tightly in a cylinder. Sometimes the filter can be composed of porus material like tightly woven plastic fibers or glass. The PUR faucet filter uses a microfiltration module which means the pore size is VERY small so it traps very tiny particles, so small in fact that it has the ability to removes 99.9% of Microbial Cysts (Cryptosporidium and Giardia). These are the bacteria that will be you sick or could even kill you. (See Milwaukee Cryptosporidium Contamination ) So now we have all the dirt taken out of the water.
2) Next comes the ability to get rid of the off odors and over 99% of pharmaceuticals that may be in your municipal water supply. Most water filtration units contain activated carbon which act like a chemical and odor (gases that are dissolved in the water) sponge absorbing chlorine, lead, mercury and a host of other things including the pharmaceuticals and pesticides. This is why you have to change filter units every 3 months or approximately 100 gals. The ability of the carbon to hold all these impurites gets used up and when it does, it starts letting all these nasty things through into your drinking water!
3) Now comes the cool part! Because the PUR filtration system is so good, its filters so much out of the water that it can leave the water tasting flat, like distilled water. That flat taste comes from the fact that it does not have anything in it to give it taste or mouth feel. How do they fix that? The folks at PUR run the water through a bed of minerals (good for your body!) and add back to the water the good minerals. Actually its the same process that COKE and WALMART use for their water only on a minature scale.
The result .... a convenient, PUR, clean, refreshing water free from pesticides, pharmaceuticals, lead, mercury, chlorine, dirt and sediment at the turn of a valve.
Now another PUR FM9400 cool feature is the Electronic Filter Life Indicator which is a convenient monitor to remind you when your filter unit needs replacing.That way you don't have all those nasty things getting past your filter into your drinking water.
I guess you can tell that I love my PUR filter. I have not had any of the leaking problems that some people have had but I thought I would mention the fact and include them in this article so you can make an informed decision.
Hope you found this article about the PUR FM9400 FAUCET FILTER interesting and informative.
The PUR FM-9400 Horizontal Faucet Filter (approx $35) comes highly rated for effectively eliminating impurities and providing good tasting water. Backed by the consumer giant Procter & Gamble, PUR also offers Procter & Gamble's customer protection guarantee and warantee protection.
The faucet mounted, 3 stage filterFM-9400 comes in 3 varieties; white, chrome and stainless steel with an estimated filter life of 3 months or 100 gals, depending on the quality of water it must filter.
It's easy to switch between filtered and unfiltered water simply by pushing a button; however, the 3-stage PUR FM-9400, along with other PUR faucet filters, earns high marks for filtering out many more contaminants than competing models. Independent tests show it filters out 99 percent of pharmaceuticals.(see PUR water filter data)
Independent tests show it filters out 99 percent of pharmaceuticals.
This filter is also easy to install, screwing onto the existing faucet aereator, and earns top ranking when it comes to water taste.
Generally speaking the faucet-mounted water filters are more convenient than pitcher-style filters and filter out more contaminants.
Also, because of the hand tightened faucet mounting we found a lot more complaints about this style -- especially about leaks.(see video)
Consumer Reports rated and ranked the PURFM9400 among the best as compared to three other faucet mounted water filters and 26 other water filters.
We found over 100 owner-written reviews of the PUR FM-9400 faucet filter at Amazon.com, with some of the complaints documented by two videos published at YouTube.
Amazon.com has the best owner reviews and provides some tips on circumventing the most common problem, leakage at the coupling betwee the faucet and the filter unit. Although hand tightening is sufficient upon initial installation, its best to snuggly tighten the faucet coupling with a vise grips or pliers after several weeks to maintain the gasket seal between the filtration unit and faucet head.
