ok, we are in Porto district, Amarante to be precise, which apparently is the most expensive 'company' water here in PT, unfiltered it tastes like swimming pool water, disgusting it is, and irritates your skin if you are of a sensitive nature (chemicals to skin wise, not thin skinnned ala Sr.Trump) anyway ......

as a plumber I installed a filtration system for the whole house, the pic below is after 11months of use, at an average of about 6-7000 lts a month, the filter is allegedly good for 100,000 ltrs a new filter aside a used filter.............this is the most expensive company water in PT and perversely enough the bill includes an amount to remove your waste from the street...... you know the big green bins........... and the more water you use the more you get charged for the 'waste removal'............. as if the water isnt bad enough........... not as bad as english water companies but its still not good ..... this is the filter for particualtes not chemicals, the chemical one does not change colour it merely gets saturated and starts to dump the excess chemicals back into your water if you do not catch it in time..........

We have a similar situation with over-chlorinated water. We can't even make tea with it.

I'd never considered a whole house filter though. That's an interesting idea.
How much does it cost to replace the charcoal filter, and how often do you need to do it?

the chemical filter is also due for replacement.......you can tell it is due for replacement due to it dumping the chemicals due to saturation and we could start to taste it again.......(I know this from keeping koi in the UK back in the day) .... both filters ordered at the same time from amazon.de, the particulate filters arrived on wed, the chemical ones are supposedly arriving today......both despatched in germany on the same day........then we are back to complaining about couriers again eh....... leave it leave it !

as for replacing the filters liveaboard, we just bought a box of 4 of each, they have lasted almost a year, they supposedly last 100,000lts, we use on average 6-7000lts so 12 x max of say 7000 = 84000 lts, temporarily gone back to bottles water for a week due to not having new spare filters to hand.

I also suppose the company saying 100,000lts depends upon the concentration of chemicals in the untreated water, bit hard for them to guarantee that precisely eh.

the entire set up cost about 150e plus the fittings to install it where about 50e and the labour was free as I did it myself, 8 new filters cost 180e, however I did have a chelp at them due to the shelf life of the filters, if I was to change them once a year it would take 4 years yeah, and the shelflife of the unused ones is 3 years, so they knocked off 20% of the invoice.......... in actual fact they could probably need to be changed after 10 months really to be on the safe side.

we could not even bath or shower in the unfiltered water due to the chemicals in it, and it affecting the other halfs skin, this system rmoves everything we need in order to bath in it and drink it...........I dont mean drink the bath water after a bath

we used to buy bottled water, just to drink ......... about 6 a week say, so if we took that as an average and averaged the cost to 1euro a bottle, 52 x 6 = 312euro a year, 180euro for the 8 filters minus the 20% = 144euro, divided by 4 = 36euro for 2 for the year, therefore a saving on the year of 276euro and that is obv not just drinking it, we can bathe in it too, and we arent throwing away 312 plastic bottles a year and we have the convenience of not running out of drinking water............. alright the maths aint precise but its near enough for the demonstration yeah.

I installed an outside tap in front of the filters so that any water for the jetwasher does not get filtered, every drop used in the house goes through the filters and we have no need to install one under the sink, we can drink the water from any tap in the house.

that's good information. thanks.