My wife is pushing for one of these very expensive home water treatment/filtration systems, but it all feels like a scam to me. No one I know has one, so turning to random strangers on the internet for opinions.
Edit: We’re on city water in a decent area. No well water. It’s more about removing the chlorine and microplastics than anything.
What you need is very location specific! What I need in my current house is different from what I needed in my first house. You MUST start with a water test. You can buy a kit at any hardware store. However there is no need - in every city I’ve lived in there is a local company that sells treatment systems that does free water testing as part of their sales pitch. They usually know more about water than I do, and they are familiar with what works in your local area. So give a couple a call and get them to tell you what is in your water and what they recommend, then choose the best bid (not low big, best - that means you trust them to install correctly, and their test results show the system will help). I’m sure there are scams in water treatment, but in general I’ve found them honest people trying to make a living.
Your city water is 100% safe to drink in most cases. Chlorine and microplastics are things used to scare you into buying scams that probably don’t even remove what they claim. Your local water treatment company won’t talk about them.
Water treatment can improve taste. Just because the water is safe to drink doesn’t mean it is pleasant. I drink RO water. (but I’ve almost always lived on a well. One house I had test results to show my water wasn’t safe to drink without treatment, the rest of the places water was safe but not tasty!)
Every house I’ve lived in have benefited from a water softer. The water is safe, but soap works much better without the hardness. My current house is about 7 grains of hardness, which means things work okay without. My first house had 31 grains, the soap didn’t work unless you used a lot and then didn’t rinse off, but it was still safe. I have relatives who live where the water is naturally soft.
I had an iron filter in one house because there was so much iron. However there is no iron in the water in my current house so there is no need for that.
Again, start with a real water test. If you don’t know what is in your water you don’t know how to treat it.
The real issue for many people is lead. Lots of houses built between WWII and the 1970’s will have lead pipes as steel was reserved for military purposes in many places.
Like I said: GET A WATER TEST! if you don’t know what you are working with you can’t treat it.
I personally am replacing the copper pipes (lead solder) in my house with PEX. There is some copper left, but not much. If you can do the work yourself this is likely cheaper than the treatment system. (but I drink RO water anyway because of taste)
Lead solder does not contact water, and if it did, it’s a fraction of a percent of the area in a pipe.
What happens to old PEX plastic? We will find out. PEX is about fast and cheap plumbing.
Copper slowly dissolves in tap water, so the pipes are only expected to last about 70 years. While we don’t have long term data on PEX, it so far is looking good and plenty of experts expect it to last longer than copper.
Copper lasts well over 100 years in my area. Plumbers love PEX because they leak in about a decade. Rodents love to chew the plastic. I’ve never see a PEX install without copper connectors or unions.
PEX is cheap labor, but full of real-world issues.