Reply #64: We have an under-sink model that the wife and I installed.

[Romulox]

Took maybe an hour. We have a GE unit with about a gallon tank that we purchased at Lowes.

I couldn't tell you if its as good as commercial stuff. It's as good as the "Ice Mountain" brand bottled my wife used to favor, but that is spring water. Metro Detroit tends to have very high quality water, so what I'm doing is mostly removing chlorine and some sediments. The water definitely has no chlorine taste or odor after filtering.

Interestingly enough, I checked the PH of filtered and unfiltered water, and the filtered stuff was noticeably more acidic (the plain tap water was neutral.) Enough difference to show up on a PH testing strip, but not enough to detect by taste alone. Which makes sense, but needed to be taken into account if you're watering delicate plants.

Unfortunately, the pricing is a real razor and blades affair. Mine is a 3 filter unit, and I spend several hundreds of dollars annually to replace them. My filters clog more frequently than the manual indicates is the average, likely because our water is somewhat hard.

One last thing: I also have the SodaStream product. The synergy between this unit and a reverse osmosis unit is strong--it results in me almost never having bottle returns or having to recycle water bottles.