Last July, I contacted Charlie Thomson (aka Aquaman and the official Aquasana rep in China) and ordered an under-the-counter Aquasana unit for our kitchen and a couple of filters for our showers. I’d had it with bottled water delivery and wanted an easy solution to clean drinking water (read about it here). I also suspected something in the water was contributing to my dry itchy skin in the winter months and wanted to ensure our kids had clean bath water (itchy skin inducing shower blog here). Installation was a snap thanks to Charlie coming over himself to install the filters and run tests on our bottled, tap, and filtered water (see results here). Bottom line, the Aquasana filtered water won hands down and we enjoyed calling the water delivery guys and telling them to pick up their empties; we even gave them our old water dispenser since there was no way we were going back to that system.
Since we traveled for two months in the fall, I waited eight months to contact Charlie again to order replacement filters (recommended every six months). Due to some changes on import laws and delays with customs, we did not receive our replacement filters until the beginning of May, so our filters were actually in use for seven months. Once again, Charlie (really, he is known as Aquaman to his friends) came in and quickly installed the replacement filters, but not before he and Reina tested the chlorine content of the tap and filtered water. Just as the results showed last July, the tap had chlorine in it and the Aquasana filter, even after 7 months of heavy use, eliminated all chlorine (and presumably all the other nastiness) from the tap water. It is worth noting that you cannot use the drinking water filters beyond their capacity to properly clean your water since they clog up over time and eventually the flow simply shuts off. I can testify to this because our pressure was dropping off with each passing week.
For our family (and others that we know) the Aquasana solution to safe drinking and bath water is the best decision we could have made with respect to home water quality. My only regret is that we didn’t do it the day after we arrived in Beijing nearly five years ago.
photo by christopher lay
