Hi,

Anyone using a reverse osmosis water filter in San Francisco?

If yes, and you pay your water bill is it really steep?

What is the cost of water in SF?

Thanks

Water bills have a minimum monthly / connection / meter fee of something like $30-50 per quarter.  The water bill is a few times that for most households with normal water use and not a large lawn.  A fair amount of that is the sewer bill.  

According to SFPUC (sfwater.org/detail.cfm/M…) the water rates in SF range from about $2 to $4 per "unit" (= 100 cubic feet, 748 gallons) per month for which they are charged about $50.  So half a cent per gallon, a couple cents per flush.

At wholesale and in large agricultural quantities without sewer service, water goes for maybe 1/100 cent per gallon, ten times that for large-scale reverse osmosis, mostly electrical costs.  Springwater is worth 5-10 cents per gallon wholesale, $1 at your local grocer.  These are rough numbers.

I don't get it.  Why does the price of reverse osmosis matter to a consumer?  A reverse osmosis filter wouldn't increase your water cost - you use the same amount of water.  The main costs would be purchase price, installation, and replacement filters.

Actually, I'm under the impression that it generally produces quite a bit of waste water (4 to 1).

Gil "whoo hoo" S. is wrong. Not only does RO waste water - for every gallon of usable water yield, there is on average a 4 gallon waste - which you pay for but do not get any advantage of - but the waste water contains a higher concentration of contaminants than it did originally. In essence, RO - and desalination - increase water pollution. RO also strips out the minerals that give water its taste and quenches your thirst.

Unless you're running a lab or have a rare health condition, RO is generally a waste of money if you are on a municipal water supply like San Francisco, which gets water from Hetch Hetchy.

Why?  We have some of the best water here.  Just get a Brita filter and you're done.

Thank you all for your replies.

I cannot drink fluoridated so I was looking at options aside from buying bottled water.

I'm not wrong.  Logically, if RO truly wasted 4 gallons of water for every gallon of pure water then the waste water would be 25% more polluted than regular tap water - hardly a toxic waste problem.  I don't know the efficiency of home water systems but tap water drinking is not a significant part of the overall water budget.  Putting an RO filter on your shower or toilet, that would be silly.  But for tapwater, if it makes you happy do it.  I haven't tasted RO water but it does taste pretty flat - the coin-op machines, and water purveyors, add chemicals back to purified water to make it taste good again.  True, SF tap water is just fine and does not need anything done to it usually.  Does RO filter out fluoride?  I haven't figured that out - a tour of google suggests that some systems do but others are not as effective.  For my use, I've found that it tastes a little bit better after a Brita filter, but that's only if you keep the filter clean and new, and don't let it grow algae.  Desalinization does not create pollution, except by using electricity.  Anything tossed back into the sea or river is something that just came out of the sea or river.  It's just more concentrated - dewatered.  That can be a problem in itself but I wouldn't classify it as pollution and it's hardly on the scale of most waste water issues.