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Re: Water filter opinions?
anthony11 #216225 07/24/08 06:49 PM
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 Originally Posted By: anthony11
An under-sink unit typically requires another hole to be drilled and another spigot, right? Something of a hassle with a stone counter :-/


With a Dremel, anything is possible. ;\)

In my case it was easy because we just have a standard 4-hole stainless steel sink where the one end just had a blank in it. The filtered-water faucet goes there.

We used to have a fridge that had a water filter in it, but the fridge itself was an expensive POS nightmare (you really don't want to get me started on that), and we tossed it. Our current fridge doesn't have a built-in filter, but I have installed an in-line water filter in the basement on its water line. That was a piece-of-cake to install. Really simple.

The big difference is that without the filter, if we didn't use the ice fast enough it would get kind of a mildew-ey stale taste/smell after a week or so. Never does that now that it's filtered, and the ice is clearer.

I think that the major difference between installing and under-sink vs. basement filter would be in how much cutting you have to do.

The under-sink system I have came with the line splitters that screw into the shut-off-valve housing. So there wasn't any cutting or soldering involved*. Just shut off the water, unscrew water line connection at the to the sink at the shut-off-valve, put the splitter on, then screw the water line back on. Could literally take 5 minutes.

With an in-basement system, you probably won't have any connections that you can simply unscrew. The job will almost certainly involve cutting the copper/PVC/whatever water pipes that are in your home. That then will require re-connecting & soldering once you're done, which might be just beyond the reach of the DIY-er. That might even technically require a plumbing permit to do, I have no idea.

*In my case there was a lot of cutting and re-piping involved, because of the stupid way that the previous home owner/plumber did the water lines. It was a mess of connectors, loops, and bizarre fittings. I had to cut it all out and replace it with modern, up-to-code, plumbing.


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Re: Water filter opinions?
PeterChenoweth #216230 07/24/08 07:03 PM
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Reminds me of the fridge that came with this place. Brand new GE Profile. The water tap inside is a royal pain, but the freezer is worse:

o The sensor for the ice cube tray being full doesn't work properly, so it over-fills such that cubes get scraped off when the tray is pulled forward, and fall down the back of the freezer compartment

o It's a freezer-on-bottom unit, with the door attached to the slides on either side, and baskets hung from the slides, so it all pulls out rather than being hinged on one side. This makes it quite easy for stuff to slip through the basket on the bottom and wedge in the gap when the door closes, leaving an opening. Last month I had the whole thing ice up because of this. Grrr.

Re: Water filter opinions?
anthony11 #216241 07/24/08 08:43 PM
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Ha! That's funny, Anthony. The POS nightmare fridge WAS a GE Profile.

I have not bought a GE product since, and I never will again so long as there is some other option.

Glad to see that they're still unable to make a decent fridge, because those sound like two very familiar problems, even though ours was a side-by-side.

And believe me, it doesn't take something getting stuck in the door for the fridge to freeze itself solid. Happened all the time with ours.




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Re: Water filter opinions?
tomtuttle #216249 07/24/08 09:45 PM
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My sink actually already had a plugged hole that fit the spigot, many sinks do.


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Re: Water filter opinions?
HomeDad #216250 07/24/08 10:00 PM
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Note to self - avoid GE refrigerators.

We have had a GE Profile dual-fuel range for about 5 years and it has been just great. Go figure.


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Re: Water filter opinions?
tomtuttle #216253 07/24/08 10:50 PM
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Their other models are probably just fine. The guy who built these places got a deal from a cousin or brother in law or something, so they may be oddball models.

We have a GE Profile dual-fuel range too that seems fine tho the oven seems to take damned near forever to heat up. I had GE Profile electric oven, uwave, dishwasher in my old place that were great. The dishwasher here seems a bit smaller, but even more quiet.

Re: Water filter opinions?
anthony11 #216277 07/25/08 03:25 AM
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Now I'm in the mood to share....

All I know is that when we bought our first & current house, we needed a fridge and I decided to splurge a bit and buy a really nice one. It was a GE Profile side-by-side, stainless steel, in-door ice & water, filters, all the bells and whistles. It was about $1,800, back in 2001. It was a really nice fridge. A lot of money for us.

After about two months, the fridge started randomly freezing itself. No ice, no water. One frozen block of ice. Then it'd go into a mega-defrost mode where it would melt everything in the freezer, and spoil most of the the things in the fridge. After a couple of weeks of fighting with GE to try to get someone to come fix it (under warranty), they finally sent a rude pair of techs that were mad at me for living 90 miles away from their office and making them drive all that way. They replaced some of the electronics, and added a whole bunch of styrofoam insulation along the back of the inside. Nice. $1,800 fridge with taped-up styrofoam all over the inside.

Three months later it started doing it again. This time leaking water all over the kitchen floor. Two more weeks of fighting with GE's tech support and they sent out a different pair of guys that told me to never buy GE products because they get 10 times more service calls on them than any other brand. They replaced something in the electronics again, and valves and wiring that control the water & ice machine.

Five months later, the touch-panel on the front started acting up, the ice machine started over-filling itself and would create one huge block of ice, and the mechanism that pushes the ice out of the door had started making horrible grinding noises, even without ice in it. Techs came out again and replaced the motor but didn't do anything with the panel or the ice machine because they couldn't 'replicate' it.

GE did then send me a letter of apology because of all the problems and offered to extend the warranty another 6 months. Yay.

Three months later - ONE month outside of the original, and FIVE months inside their promised warranty, it went completely haywire. It would flip its compressor on and off, then freeze itself, then actually heat up, stop making ice completely, become unresponsive to the buttons, etc. Called GE and they had no record of ever offering the extended warranty, and claimed they had no fax machines there to receive the letter they sent me. Out of warranty, nothing they could do. We were on our own. All they offered to do was give me the numbers of 'local' repair shops. 50% of which said they didn't work on GE products anymore because GE would never pay them for warranty work. One that did took a look at it confirmed that its computer was fried (again) and quoted me over $500 to get the new circuit boards.

We actually threw a party when the scrap-metal guy gave us $5 for it and hauled it off to the junk yard.

I'm sure GE has made a few good products over the years, but I will never give them another dime if I can help it. Not even their light bulbs.


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Re: Water filter opinions?
PeterChenoweth #216283 07/25/08 03:44 AM
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About the only fridge worse than that I can think of randomly growled "Zuuuul..."


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Re: Water filter opinions?
CV #216290 07/25/08 08:13 AM
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 Originally Posted By: CV
Cari says under the sink and on-faucet.


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Re: Water filter opinions?
Ken.C #216304 07/25/08 12:35 PM
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 Originally Posted By: kcarlile
About the only fridge worse than that I can think of randomly growled "Zuuuul..."


Exactly. We did often refer to it as being 'possessed'. It really felt like it was sometimes. It really sucked to come home from a weekend away and wonder if the fridge would still be cold. I even had an electrician come out and check my home's wiring, just to be sure that there wasn't something going on. He found nothing.

It's replacement fridge, an Electrolux, has worked flawlessly for 7 years now. (Knock on wood...)

Anyway....... that's far enough off topic for me now...

Yeah, I'd definitely say that the kitchen sink water filter idea is a good one. As others have said, just pick one up at your nearest Lowes, HD, or other hardware store. But do think about the replacement filters. Look at the costs of them, because that will be re-occurring. Lowes and HD both carry these under-sink sytems, but they will be from different manufactuers and not compatible with each other. Once you buy a system, you're going to be locked into their filters, so make sure you can conveniently get the filters. It is generally a once-a-year thing, but you do have to do it. Our system even has a light that changes colors to tell you the status of the filters. The system we have has apparently been discontinued, but Lowes still carries the filters. I know that eventually they won't and I'll have to put in a different system.

I'm not quite as sold on the whole-house systems. A co-worker had one of those installed. It always seemed suspicious to me because it literally was sold to them by a door-to-door salesman toting around water samples. Big-time scare tactics. It was one of those multi-thousand-dollar, reverse-osmosis, whole-house setups. While it did make their water taste better than 'tap', it didn't seem any better (taste-wise) than what was coming out of our $100 system. Nice to have filtered water at every tap, I guess, but it sure seemed like a waste to spend that much money for that super-water, only to literally just flush it down the toilet. ;\)

Good luck!


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