Question:
Does anyone know of an unbiased source for water filter comparisons? I'm looking into a whole house filter and can't seem to find any decent info that doesnt' come from someone selling the equipment. Consumer reports' comparison seemed pretty lame. I had a Rainsoft rep come to my house for what turned out to be a loooong sales pitch only to try to convince me to buy a $7,000+ system. There must be other alternatives that work!

I live in Charleston, SC and have city water. I just don't trust what's in it. Anyone with filter experiences out there?

Answer: I think you are going to have to sit through some more dog and pony shows, and then try to sort out the real information on your own. I have had a Commers system and a Culligan system. I was not happy with the Commers system due to the cost of keeping it loaded with salt and changing filters. The water was, however, great. The Culligan system seems to work very well. It has a computerized controller on the softener, so it hardly uses any salt at all. Other options include renting from Sears or buying at Home Depot or Lowes. Avoid the units sold through multi-level marketing.

Depends a lot on what you are trying to filter. If your water is hard, then a demand-type of water softener will do the job. We have used Sears water softeners in several houses since the early 60's and never had a significant problem with them. Our current Sears demand softener uses very little s We got a year's supply (bag a month) of salt with the softener. That was a year ago and I still have so much salt in the garage I can't hardly get around it.