I live near a huge highway construction project, and about once a month they break the water main, meaning we get a boil water notice for ~48h.
I have a Culligan water filter that runs to a spout on my sink, and one that’s on our ice maker, but we use the level 1 canisters to remove the taste from the water. These canisters are good for about 6 months of regular use (ice maker is about a year).
During the boil water notice, the level 1 filters aren’t sufficient to filter out bacteria and such, so I’d need a level 3 filter for that. But, those are expensive and only good for about 2 months, so I don’t want to exclusively use them.
I’d like to have one in storage that I can throw on when we have a main break, but I’m not sure the best way to store it. It’s not super easy to drain the water out of the canisters.
Edit: While I appreciate the thought, I’m not interested in alternatives to my setup. I like my countertop water dispenser, and I’m looking for a way to keep my current QoL during an outage with the least amount of trouble.
When I was in this kind of situation I just got a water cooler and had my water delivered
Look for instructions about backflushing and cleaning water filters. If it’s just about microbes, maybe get a camping filter. At least with camping filters, cleaning and storing them is fine as long as they don’t get exposed to freezing temperatures.
For chemical removal I’ve been wanting to try an activated carbon aquarium filter, but they aren’t really made for the purpose.
Also, instead of buying bottled water, you could simply fill empty bottles with tap water at times when the tap water is potable.
The problem with filling containers of water ahead of time is that they’re likely not potable by the time you need it. I don’t want to deal with iodine tabs and such.
I do have a backpacking water filter, but those cartridges are significantly more expensive than a level 3 for my sink.
Hollow fiber backpacking filters don’t need cartridges and they last a very long time (100,000 gallons for Sawyer filters, supposedly). What happens is they clog up and filtering slows down. You then backflush them by squirting water through them in the reverse direction. If the water isn’t that dirty to start with, you should be ok.
https://www.sawyer.com/product/one-gallon-gravity-water-filtration-system
Filter by itself (threads onto soda bottles): https://www.sawyer.com/product/mini-water-filtration-system-red
2 days a month!? shitbags. sorry dude, i have nothing useful to say but that sounds terrible. I assume trying to vote out whoever permitted such abusive disrespect to your home is unlikely to work.
Our city council member is actually pretty great. He’s in our neighborhood group chat and will respond almost instantly to issues and get us the engineers reports before the city alert system does its thing.
If microbes are the concern then A UV system is going to be a whole lot cheaper in the long run. The UV bulbs in those are usually rated for 1 year of continuous use and if you only run it when there is a boil warning then it’ll last much longer than that. It looks like one of those will run you right about $100 which pays for itself pretty quick when compared to the cost of the more expensive filters.
I’m not going to buy a UV system that’s only useful like 3 weeks a year tops. Plus, microbes aren’t the only concern, they’re just the one my filter doesn’t cover.
But you said that for 2 days a month you have this problem that you started this topic over?
2 days a month x 12 months = 24 days, which is just over 3 weeks a year lol
Mostly I hate the waste of having to use bottled water for everything during those days.